Starting a new backtest

Clicking Start new backtest launches a short guided wizard that gets your TradingView chart into a clean, honest testing state before the first decision. Here is every screen, in order, and what happens behind each one.

Step 0: load a strategy

Rafale reads its trade list from the TradingView strategy on your chart. If no strategy is loaded, the wizard holds on a "Load a strategy to start" screen until one appears.

• Adding one : in TradingView, open the Indicators tab, then Technicals › Strategies, and pick any strategy. Or add your own Pine Script strategy. Anything that produces a Strategy Tester report works.
• Detection is automatic. Rafale watches the chart (checking about twice a second during the wizard) and moves to the next step the moment the strategy report exists. Removing the strategy mid-wizard sends you back to this screen; re-adding it resumes where you were.
• The collapsed-panel quirk. TradingView often restores the Strategy Tester panel collapsed after a page reload. In that state the report does not exist in the page yet, so the strategy is on the chart but invisible to Rafale. Rafale handles this itself by quietly expanding the Strategy Tester once. In the rare case detection still hangs, hide the strategy (the eye icon) and show it again : that forces TradingView to re-render the report and Rafale picks it up instantly. This should almost never be needed.

Step 1: initial capital

The first wizard screen sets your starting capital, and it does its homework for you: Rafale fetches your account size from your Afterburner account in the background and shows it as the number to use. If you have not set an account size in Afterburner, it recommends 100000 instead.

• Where to put it : open Strategy settings › Properties › Initial capital and paste the number.
• Click-to-copy chips. The number shown in the panel is a chip: click it and the raw value is in your clipboard, no separators, no currency symbol, exactly what TradingView's field expects.
• Why it matters : matching capital between TradingView and Afterburner makes the strategy's dollar PnL translate cleanly into R once imported (1R = 1% of the account).

Step 2: risk 1% per trade

Next, the wizard makes sure every simulated trade risks exactly one R. In Strategy settings › Properties › Default order size, set the value to 1 (click-to-copy chip again) and switch the unit to % of equity.

Step 3: the backtest period

The last screen shows the period the strategy report currently covers: First trade, Last trade, and the number of trades in between. This is read live from the report itself, and it refreshes automatically: the panel polls the report a few times a second, so the moment TradingView recalculates, the dates and count update in front of you.

• Changing the period : use the strategy panel at the bottom-left of the TradingView screen (the date range controls of the Strategy Tester / deep backtesting). Pick a longer window and watch the trade count climb on the wizard screen.
• TradingView Essential limitation : Essential users cannot modify the period; the report covers whatever TradingView computes by default. Plans above Essential can set custom ranges.
• Back buttons on every step let you walk the wizard backwards; nothing is committed until you start.

Start

The green Start button pulls the strategy's full trade list and launches the session immediately. Under the hood, Rafale grabs the Strategy Tester's own CSV export silently in the background, parses every entry and exit, saves the new session, switches the chart into replay mode, and teleports you to trade number one. If TradingView briefly flashes a "Error generating CSV" toast during this, ignore it: that is a side effect of the silent grab and the data is fine (Rafale hides the toast for you).