What Is One Trade in ENTRIQ? Backtest from Start to Finish

When you record practice trades in backtesting, you can get stuck on "where should one trade start and end?"

In ENTRIQ, one trade runs from when you press "Start" to when you press "Finish." Even if your position hits zero in between, it doesn't end automatically. Where you draw the line is up to you, to match the strategy you want to test. Most trading journals treat a trade as done the moment the position reaches zero, but ENTRIQ is different in that you choose when to finish.

This article explains how ENTRIQ thinks about one trade in backtesting, and the actual operating flow.

For the general idea of "what is one trade," see the separate article What Counts as One Trade? How Counting Changes Your Stats. This one is the practical side: how to actually use that idea in ENTRIQ.

How ENTRIQ defines one trade

In ENTRIQ, one trade is simple.

From when you press "Start" to when you press "Finish" is one trade.

No matter how many times you enter or exit (fills) in between, and even if your position goes to zero once, it's all treated as the same single trade until you press "Finish." Where you delimit is yours to decide, to match the strategy you want to test.

• Start: you decide where a trade begins
• Fills (entries and exits): as many as you want in between
• Finish: you decide where a trade ends

In other words, ENTRIQ does not do "position hits zero → trade ends automatically." You're the one who presses Finish. As explained below, this lets you test both short-term and longer-term strategies with the same mechanism.

Note that "Start" is an idea most other tools don't have. It's a declaration of "I'm beginning one piece of testing here," and when you press "Finish," that series of trades is recorded and saved as one trade.

The operating flow

In actual backtesting, the steps go like this.

• Step 1: "Start" the test Select any bar on the past chart and click "Start." This is the starting point of the trade's record.
• Step 2: Advance the chart one bar at a time Use "Next" to advance. With what's ahead still hidden, read the market from the candle shapes and indicators.
• Step 3: Enter (place an order) When your setup appears, enter a quantity and place the order (buy or sell). To hold both directions, you can also enter the opposite side and continue.
• Step 4: Exit Advance with "Next," and press the exit button where you want to close. While the strategy is still playing out, you can split your orders or re-enter as many times as you like in between.
• Step 5: "Finish" the test When the strategy is complete, or your assumed scenario breaks, click "Finish." At this point, the series of trades is recorded and saved as one trade.

The point is to adjust the interval between "Start" and "Finish" to match the strategy you want to test.

Lining up a typical record with an ENTRIQ record makes the difference clear.

In ENTRIQ, you can re-enter as many times as you like within one trade. That's what makes it possible to group a series of trades into one piece of testing.

Delimiting changes with the strategy

Even for the same "full close (position at zero)," whether it's the end of one trade depends on the strategy you're testing.

Testing a longer-term strategy (grouping across the gaps)

Say you're testing a strategy like trend-following that rides a longer-term trend. If you fully close at a pullback partway through, but the trend itself is still going, that's not the end of the trade. Advance with "Next," re-enter if another entry chance comes, and press "Finish" when the trend ends.

In this case, one trade contains several entries and exits — "enter → exit → re-enter → exit." As long as the longer-term strategy continues, you can group them and test them as one trend-following trade.

For example, to test a big down market, you can press "Start," trade repeatedly within that phase, and press "Finish" when the market settles. Rather than one round trip, you group your whole response to that market into one piece of testing. Because the record isn't chopped up per trade, you can review whether your series of responses to that market was right, as one aggregated trade.

Testing a short-term strategy (one phase at a time)

On the other hand, if you want to focus on testing just double tops (W tops), you press "Finish" once the entry and exit for one double top are done. You treat it as one phase = one trade, and start the next double top as a new trade.

Here the trade is close to "one entry to exit." It suits testing a specific phase or pattern over and over.

Like this, ENTRIQ doesn't force one way to group. To match what you want to test — a series in a longer-term strategy, or a short-term specific phase — you choose when to press "Finish."

Tag your trades with strategy tags

Once you've finalized a trade, you can give it a strategy tag (a label for your setup, like trend-following or double top). With tags on, you can later review "how well is this setup working" all together in the analysis dashboard.

For example, after testing trend-following 100 times, you can pull out just the "trend-following" strategy tag and check that setup's win rate and average P/L together. Because you can slice results per setup, which strategy suits you comes into view.

How you define a trade and strategy tags work best considered together. For a longer-term strategy, group the series into one trade and tag it with that setup; for short-term phase testing, take one phase at a time and tag each with the same pattern. This makes per-setup test results easy to aggregate.

FAQ

Q. When the position hits zero, does the trade end automatically? No. In ENTRIQ, even when the position hits zero, the same trade continues until you press "Finish." Whether it's a temporary exit mid-trend or the completion of one trade depends on the strategy you're testing, so you decide where a trade begins and ends.

Q. Can I enter and exit as many times as I want within one trade? Yes. Between "Start" and "Finish," you can repeat entries and exits (fills) any number of times. Split entries, adding, and holding both directions are all possible. You can group them and test them as one trade.

Q. Is it okay to change how I define a trade for short-term vs. longer-term? No problem. In fact, matching it to the strategy you want to test is natural. For a longer-term strategy, group the series into one trade; for short-term phase testing, take one phase per trade.

Q. What happens if I press "Finish" by mistake? The finished trade is recorded as one. If you want to keep testing the same strategy, "Start" a new trade, tag it with the same strategy tag if needed, and you can review them together later.

Summary

One trade in ENTRIQ backtesting is one unit from pressing "Start" to pressing "Finish." In between, no matter how many entries and exits you repeat, and even if the position hits zero once, it's treated as the same trade.

Rather than a mechanism that ends the trade automatically when the position hits zero, you choose when to press "Finish" to match the strategy you want to test — that's the basis of how ENTRIQ groups a trade. For a longer-term strategy, group the series; for a short-term phase, take one at a time. Tag your trades with strategy tags, and you can review test results per setup.

Try recording one trade from "Start" to "Finish" and you'll get a feel for how to group. Not "one round trip and you're done," but "test one strategy through to the end" — that's the basis of journaling trades in ENTRIQ.

This article is for informational purposes only and is not a recommendation to buy or sell any specific security. Trading involves risk, and future results are not guaranteed. ーーーendーーー

Reproduce this validation yourself

With ENTRIQ's chart replay, you can trade through past charts using the same rules.