Time Traveling

Time Traveling is Stratifyre’s interactive way to inspect a backtest at any point in its history. Instead of relying on static charts or digging through rigid numerical logs, you can literally “time travel” through your backtest using a specialized Timeline Slider.

By scrubbing back and forth through time, you can see the exact state of the market and understand exactly what your algorithm was evaluating at that specific moment.

How Time Traveling Works

At the bottom of the Backtest Chart interface, you will find the Timeline Slider. This slider spans the full duration of your backtest. Dragging the slider handle—or clicking anywhere on the timeline—instantly teleports the entire application state to that exact point in time.

When you scrub to a specific timestamp:

• The Chart Updates: The main price chart updates to show market data only up to that moment. Everything to the right of the current position is the “future” that your strategy had yet to discover.
• Indicators Re-render: All active technical indicators update so you can see the exact signals that were being generated.
• Algo State is Revealed: You can inspect what your strategy was doing—what positions it held, what orders were pending, and the overall logic driving its decisions at that exact slice of time.

Why This is Powerful

Traditional backtesting relies heavily on “black box” reporting—you get a summary of trades and an equity curve, but debugging why a specific decision was made can be an extremely tedious process. You might find yourself squinting at a static chart trying to reverse-engineer indicator values on a specific historical bar.

With Time Traveling, you eliminate the guesswork:

• Visual Debugging: Did your strategy buy earlier than expected? Scrub directly to the moment right before the trade and observe the exact state of the market that triggered it.
• Understand the Context: Look at the exact historical context your algo faced. Were markets highly volatile? Was it a low-volume period?
• Immediate Feedback: Instantly scrub between different trades without having to manually reconstruct charts or re-calculate indicators.

Interacting with the Timeline

• Click to Jump: Click anywhere along the slider track to jump to a specific date and time.
• Scrubbing: Drag the slider handle to smoothly scan through market action and watch how your equity and positions dynamically evolved.
• Synchronized UI: Combine the Timeline Slider with the built-in UI panels to get a comprehensive view of your active orders and overall algorithmic state, perfectly synchronized to the slider’s timestamp.

Time traveling gives you a true interactive experience for your backtests, bridging the gap between historical market data and your strategy’s execution logic.