Methodology and setup — real per-symbol costs and how to run the systems

← realbacktesting home
The realbacktesting engine · methodology

What "real" costs — measured, per symbol, line by line.

The realbacktesting engine is the same core that trades the live account. It never assumes a flat or zero spread: it charges the real, measured spread of each instrument, plus 1 bps slippage, commission and swap, on intrabar M1 execution. One uniform spread — all a multi-asset cTrader backtest can apply — is wrong for every market at once; that gap is exactly why our number is the honest one.

Real per-symbol spread

measured from tick data · charged on every trade
InstrumentReal spread
EUR/USD forex0.6 pips
USD/JPY forex0.7 pips
GBP/JPY forex1.9 pips
XAU/USD gold$0.25
InstrumentReal spread
US100 Nasdaq1.3 pts
GER40 DAX1.9 pts
ETH/USD crypto$2.30
BTC/USD crypto$13.14

From 0.6 pips on EUR/USD to $13.14 on Bitcoin — a single flat number can't be right for all of them. Our engine charges each market its own real spread, on top of commission, swap and slippage.

Executionintrabar M1Fills simulated intrabar on M1 bars — stops & targets fill at the real level, not once a minute.
Spreadreal · per-symbolEach instrument's own measured spread — see the table above. 0.6 pips to $13.
Slippage1 bpsApplied to every single fill, entry and exit, always adverse.
Commissionreal per-symbol (auto)FX $2.50/lot/side · indices free · crypto 0.0325% · metals 0.0007%.
SwapappliedOvernight financing per instrument, including triple-swap days.
Sizingadditive %-risk on 80,000 EUR (compound optional)Additive %-risk on a fixed base — no compounding to inflate the curve.
Drawdown discipline & out-of-sample drawdown ceiling enforced at the 95th percentile of Monte Carlo (worse of trade-resample + daily block-bootstrap), confirmed on a 30% out-of-sample hold-out. Data: cTrader broker M1, 2021-2026.

Modelled in EUR on an 80,000 EUR base. Because every strategy is percent-based (risk, return and drawdown are fractions of the account, not fixed cash), the result applies identically to a USD — or any-currency — account of the same size; only the displayed currency symbol changes.

Run it right

Six steps. One account. Don't touch the dials.

These systems are calibrated to a single, fixed configuration — the one every number on this page was measured at. Run it exactly as shipped and your account tracks the design; change it and you're off the map.

Buy it once cTrader Store · no downloads Add to one chart manages all symbols itself It trades 6 markets FX · indices · crypto · gold RUN IT 24/7 — THREE WAYS Local cTrader keep cTrader open A small VPS always on · machine off cTrader free cloud 24/7 · nothing left on
Buy once → add to a single chart → it manages all six markets internally. Run it locally, on a small VPS, or in cTrader's free 24/7 cloud. It only uses cTrader's own trading tools — no "full access" warning to approve.
  1. 1
    Buy it once on the cTrader Store

    Your purchased cBot appears inside cTrader under Automate → your cBots. No external downloads, no keys to paste.

  2. 2
    Add it to a single chart

    Open any one chart (e.g. EUR/USD H1), click Add cBot and pick the product. It manages all of its own symbols internally — you never add it per market.

  3. 3
    It ships ready — don't touch the dials

    The cBot loads with its calibrated settings already built in as the defaults — there is no preset file to import. Just don't change a value: the ROI, drawdown and parity on this page are tied to exactly these settings.

  4. 4
    Use a Swing account — not Standard

    These need an FTMO Swing account: they hold over the weekend and trade through news, which a Standard account force-closes and restricts. Risk is sized off your balance automatically.

  5. 5
    Start it — local or cloud

    Click Start. Run it locally with cTrader open (a small VPS for 24/7), or ask us for the cloud-ready build and run it in cTrader's free cloud 24/7 with nothing of yours left on. It only uses cTrader's own trading tools — no 'full access' warning to approve.

  6. 6
    One product per account

    Run a single product on a given account. Never stack two of ours — or any other bot — on the same account; it breaks the per-account uniqueness and the published risk profile.

Golden rules
  • Use a Swing account — never a Standard one.
  • One product per account — only that one.
  • Don't change the parameters.
  • Let it hold over weekends and trade through news.
Your responsibility

Change the calibrated parameters and you're on your own: we cannot promise behaviour anywhere near the published backtest once the settings are altered — that is your responsibility. Running more than one system on the same account, or sizing outside the built-in balance-based risk, equally voids any resemblance to these numbers. Trading involves a substantial risk of loss; past performance does not guarantee future results. realbacktesting is not affiliated with, or endorsed by, FTMO or any prop firm.