Your First Backtest

This tutorial walks you through creating a strategy and backtesting it against real market data.

Prerequisites

• A Keel account (sign up free)

Step 1: Create a Strategy

From your dashboard, click New Strategy and give it a name.

Step 2: Add Components

Add components from the sidebar to build your pipeline. A minimal strategy needs:

1. Data source — loads price data for your chosen instruments and timeframe
2. Signal — generates trading signals from the data (e.g., momentum, mean reversion)
3. Forecast scaling — normalizes signals to a consistent scale
4. Position sizing — converts forecasts into target portfolio weights

Step 3: Connect the Pipeline

Connect the components in order. The builder validates all connections automatically — fix any errors in the problems panel before proceeding.

Step 4: Run the Backtest

1. Click the Backtest button
2. Set the date range (e.g., last 90 days)
3. Click Run

Step 5: Read the Results

Your backtest report includes:

What's Next?

• Experiment with different parameters and components
• Try the CLI to build and validate strategies from the terminal
• Deploy your strategy live when you're satisfied with the results