What Is Backtick?

Backtick is tradeSteward's built-in options backtesting engine: define a position the same way you would configure a bot, run it against years of market history, and study the results before you risk a dollar.

Why backtest before trading live

Ideas that sound great in your head do not always survive contact with real market data. Backtick lets you test an options strategy across a long stretch of history, including calm markets, volatile markets, and everything in between, so you can see how it would have behaved before you put a bot on it with real money.

Because Backtick positions use the same entry, leg, exit, and stop settings as live bots, a backtest is not an abstract simulation of a different system. It is a rehearsal of the exact configuration you could deploy afterward. That also works in reverse: if you already run bots, you can pull a bot's settings straight into a backtest and see how the configuration would have held up over years instead of weeks.

How Backtick works

A backtest, called a Backtick, is built from a few pieces:

• Positions describe what to trade: the underlying symbol, legs, strike targeting, entry timing, profit targets, and stops. You can create positions from scratch or pull in the settings of an existing bot, and one Backtick can hold many positions.
• Backtick position accounts are simulated accounts that hold your test positions, so results can be grouped and reported the way your real accounts are.
• Commission profiles model per-contract commissions and fees, so results reflect realistic trading costs rather than frictionless fills.
• Your Backtick User Settings supply the starting balance and test date range for new runs, along with realism controls such as slippage and execution delay assumptions. See Backtick User Settings and Simulation Realism.

You assemble a run in the builder, save it as a draft, and queue it from the Backtick Dashboard. Runs execute on tradeSteward's historical options data and produce a full statistical workup: profit over time, win rate, drawdown, a monthly performance calendar, per-position detail, and a deep bench of analysis sections behind them.

The full Backtick toolkit

A single backtest is just the starting point. The platform around it covers the whole testing workflow:

• Quick single-position tests. QuickTick is a one-page builder for testing one position fast, with the position editor built in and every change auto-saved.
• Results and analytics. Every run gets headline metrics plus deep-dive sections for risk, entry timing, volatility context, and fill quality. Start with Read Your Backtick Results and go further with Deep-Dive Analytics.
• Comparison. Put runs side by side with Compare Backticks, or check how a live bot tracks its backtest with Bot Trade vs Backtick Comparison.
• Portfolios. The Portfolio Builder combines your best positions from past runs into one composite test, so you can study diversification and overlapping drawdowns before trading a whole book.
• Parameter sweeps. SweepTick takes one position and sweeps one setting across a range of values — or two settings together as a grid — running every variation as one job.
• Iteration. Copy a run, change one thing, and requeue; rerun old tests against the latest data; or import a Backtick someone shared with you. See Copy, Rerun, and Import Backticks.
• Going live. Convert a winning position directly into a live bot, and keep the two in sync afterward. See Turn a Winning Backtick into a Live Bot.
• Sharing. Publish a read-only results link with Share Backtick Results; subscribed recipients can import the run into their own account.

Where to find Backtick

Everything lives under the Backtick menu in the navigation bar. The Backtick Dashboard shows your queue status, draft Backticks, recent runs, and a summary card of your current Backtick User Settings. Create Backtick is the full multi-position builder, Create QuickTick is the fast lane for a single position, and the Backtick Library keeps completed runs organized with tags and saved/unsaved lifecycle tabs. Ready to build one? Start with Create Your First Backtick.