What it actually does
Every capability below ships today. The ones that do not are listed at the bottom, by name, rather than left for you to find out later.
Replay and execution
The part every backtester claims. The difference is what your order hits when you send it.
- Bar-by-bar market replay
- Pick a day the market already lived and step through it at whatever speed you want, from one bar at a time up to fast-forward. Nothing about the future is loaded into the chart ahead of the playhead.
- A real matching engine
- Market, limit and stop orders fill against the book the way they would have on the day, not against the close of the candle. Rewinding un-does the fill, because position state is derived from the ledger rather than accumulated as you go.Read the docs
- Accounts and ledgers
- Balance, equity and open positions are computed from a timestamped ledger, so every number on screen is reproducible from the trade history and survives a rewind.Read the docs
- Prop-firm challenge mode
- An unbounded list of phases, each with its own profit target, daily and overall drawdown limits and rules. Breaches are evaluated live as the session runs and you get a pass or breach verdict, plus a certificate when you clear a phase.
Charts and market data
The engine is ours, so the chart is not limited to what a licensed third-party widget chooses to expose. Read the fine print on this section though - some of it is engine reach, not data we serve.
- Seconds and custom timeframes
- Down to one-second bars, and any custom interval you want to define. Aggregation happens from sub-bars, so a forming candle is honest about what has actually printed.Read the docs
- Multi-chart layouts
- Several panes, synchronised, with per-pane settings and drawings that persist per symbol.Read the docs
- Drawing tools
- The usual set plus position tools, with per-drawing settings and a favourites bar. Drawings are saved per symbol rather than per chart.Read the docs
- Write your own chart type
- Candlestick, OHLC, line and area ship as ordinary implementations of the same interface your own chart type would implement. Nothing about the built-ins is privileged.Read the docs
- The engine reaches level 3 - the site does not, yet
- ChristTrade Depth renders level 1, level 2 and raw order-by-order flow, including footprint charts and order book heatmaps. That is real and you can build on it today with your own data. The hosted app serves candle data, because redistributing order-book data is expensive. Said plainly here so nobody signs up expecting a heatmap.Read the docs
Read this one carefully
Extending it
Most platforms let you pick indicators from a list. This one lets you ship code into the render loop.
- Custom indicators in a purpose-built language
- A scripting language with its own standard library, draw commands, typed parameters, and the choice of drawing as an overlay or in its own pane. Fully documented, down to the keyword list.Read the docs
- A real plugin system
- Plugins get a lifecycle, scoped permissions, their own storage and settings, a service registry, scheduling and notifications. They can add drawings, chart types, panels, toolbar items, data sources, and more.Read the docs
- TypeScript, scripted and WebAssembly plugins
- Write one in TypeScript against the plugin interface, hot-reload a scripted one while the chart is running, or compile something heavy to WebAssembly when the render loop cannot afford it.Read the docs
- Bring your own data
- The data adapter interface is public. Symbols, sessions, streaming, supplemental series and processors are all yours to implement, which is what makes a bring-your-own-API-key setup possible.Read the docs
- Open source, and actually inspectable
- ChristTrade Depth is the same engine the app runs on, not a cut-down community edition. If you want to know how a number is calculated, you can go and read it.Read the docs
Everything around the trade
A backtest you do not review is just an expensive video game.
- Analytics that tell the truth
- Win rate, profit factor, expectancy in R, payoff ratio, median R, Kelly fraction, drawdown curve, expected-value curve and initial-versus-realised RR. Computed from the ledger, so they do not flatter you.
- Monte Carlo simulation
- Resample your trade distribution across as many runs as you want and read the spread: mean return, CAGR, max drawdown, Sharpe, Sortino, annual volatility, 95th-percentile best case, median, and probability of ruin.
- Performance sliced by time
- Win rate by weekday, monthly performance with long-versus-short splits, streak tracking, average trade duration, and an hourly-by-weekday heatmap that shows the hours you should probably stop trading.
- Trade journal
- Write down the reasoning while it is still fresh, with checklists and per-trade notes. A month later it reads like someone else wrote it, and that person is who you learn from.
- Economic calendar and news
- CPI, FOMC, payrolls. Know which events landed inside the session you just replayed.
- Cloud storage and sync
- Sessions, drawings, indicators and settings follow you between devices instead of living in one browser profile.
Still owed
Written down here so you hear it from me rather than find out on your third session.
- Futures and forex dataNot yet
- In progress. The engine is asset-agnostic and already handles order-by-order data for any instrument. The blocker is the cost of licensing and redistributing the data, not the software.
- Level 3 data in the hosted appNot yet
- The engine renders order-by-order flow, footprint charts and heatmaps, and the docs cover all of it - but this site serves candle data today. Redistributing order-book data is expensive; a bring-your-own-API-key route is the likely way in.
Free is the whole thing.
No card, no trial clock. Pro is $7 a month and covers the servers and the data.