# Advanced Backtesting Analysis ## Analyze the buy/entry and sell/exit tags It can be helpful to understand how a strategy behaves according to the buy/entry tags used to mark up different buy conditions. You might want to see more complex statistics about each buy and sell condition above those provided by the default backtesting output. You may also want to determine indicator values on the signal candle that resulted in a trade opening. !!! Note The following buy reason analysis is only available for backtesting, *not hyperopt*. We need to run backtesting with the `--export` option set to `signals` to enable the exporting of signals **and** trades: ``` bash freqtrade backtesting -c --timeframe --strategy --timerange= --export=signals ``` This will tell freqtrade to output a pickled dictionary of strategy, pairs and corresponding DataFrame of the candles that resulted in buy signals. Depending on how many buys your strategy makes, this file may get quite large, so periodically check your `user_data/backtest_results` folder to delete old exports. Before running your next backtest, make sure you either delete your old backtest results or run backtesting with the `--cache none` option to make sure no cached results are used. If all goes well, you should now see a `backtest-result-{timestamp}_signals.pkl` file in the `user_data/backtest_results` folder. To analyze the entry/exit tags, we now need to use the `freqtrade backtesting-analysis` command with `--analysis-groups` option provided with space-separated arguments: ``` bash freqtrade backtesting-analysis -c --analysis-groups 0 1 2 3 4 5 ``` This command will read from the last backtesting results. The `--analysis-groups` option is used to specify the various tabular outputs showing the profit fo each group or trade, ranging from the simplest (0) to the most detailed per pair, per buy and per sell tag (4): * 0: overall winrate and profit summary by enter_tag * 1: profit summaries grouped by enter_tag * 2: profit summaries grouped by enter_tag and exit_tag * 3: profit summaries grouped by pair and enter_tag * 4: profit summaries grouped by pair, enter_ and exit_tag (this can get quite large) * 5: profit summaries grouped by exit_tag More options are available by running with the `-h` option. ### Using export-filename Normally, `backtesting-analysis` uses the latest backtest results, but if you wanted to go back to a previous backtest output, you need to supply the `--export-filename` option. You can supply the same parameter to `backtest-analysis` with the name of the final backtest output file. This allows you to keep historical versions of backtest results and re-analyse them at a later date: ``` bash freqtrade backtesting -c --timeframe --strategy --timerange= --export=signals --export-filename=/tmp/mystrat_backtest.json ``` You should see some output similar to below in the logs with the name of the timestamped filename that was exported: ``` 2022-06-14 16:28:32,698 - freqtrade.misc - INFO - dumping json to "/tmp/mystrat_backtest-2022-06-14_16-28-32.json" ``` You can then use that filename in `backtesting-analysis`: ``` freqtrade backtesting-analysis -c --export-filename=/tmp/mystrat_backtest-2022-06-14_16-28-32.json ``` ### Tuning the buy tags and sell tags to display To show only certain buy and sell tags in the displayed output, use the following two options: ``` --enter-reason-list : Space-separated list of enter signals to analyse. Default: "all" --exit-reason-list : Space-separated list of exit signals to analyse. Default: "all" ``` For example: ```bash freqtrade backtesting-analysis -c --analysis-groups 0 2 --enter-reason-list enter_tag_a enter_tag_b --exit-reason-list roi custom_exit_tag_a stop_loss ``` ### Outputting signal candle indicators The real power of `freqtrade backtesting-analysis` comes from the ability to print out the indicator values present on signal candles to allow fine-grained investigation and tuning of buy signal indicators. To print out a column for a given set of indicators, use the `--indicator-list` option: ```bash freqtrade backtesting-analysis -c --analysis-groups 0 2 --enter-reason-list enter_tag_a enter_tag_b --exit-reason-list roi custom_exit_tag_a stop_loss --indicator-list rsi rsi_1h bb_lowerband ema_9 macd macdsignal ``` The indicators have to be present in your strategy's main DataFrame (either for your main timeframe or for informative timeframes) otherwise they will simply be ignored in the script output. There are a range of candle and trade-related fields that are included in the analysis so are automatically accessible by including them on the indicator-list, and these include: - **open_date :** trade open datetime - **close_date :** trade close datetime - **min_rate :** minimum price seen throughout the position - **max_rate :** maximum price seen throughout the position - **open :** signal candle open price - **close :** signal candle close price - **high :** signal candle high price - **low :** signal candle low price - **volume :** signal candle volume - **profit_ratio :** trade profit ratio - **profit_abs :** absolute profit return of the trade ### Filtering the trade output by date To show only trades between dates within your backtested timerange, supply the usual `timerange` option in `YYYYMMDD-[YYYYMMDD]` format: ``` --timerange : Timerange to filter output trades, start date inclusive, end date exclusive. e.g. 20220101-20221231 ``` For example, if your backtest timerange was `20220101-20221231` but you only want to output trades in January: ```bash freqtrade backtesting-analysis -c --timerange 20220101-20220201 ``` ### Printing out rejected signals Use the `--rejected-signals` option to print out rejected signals. ```bash freqtrade backtesting-analysis -c --rejected-signals ``` ### Writing tables to CSV Some of the tabular outputs can become large, so printing them out to the terminal is not preferable. Use the `--analysis-to-csv` option to disable printing out of tables to standard out and write them to CSV files. ```bash freqtrade backtesting-analysis -c --analysis-to-csv ``` By default this will write one file per output table you specified in the `backtesting-analysis` command, e.g. ```bash freqtrade backtesting-analysis -c --analysis-to-csv --rejected-signals --analysis-groups 0 1 ``` This will write to `user_data/backtest_results`: * rejected_signals.csv * group_0.csv * group_1.csv To override where the files will be written, also specify the `--analysis-csv-path` option. ```bash freqtrade backtesting-analysis -c --analysis-to-csv --analysis-csv-path another/data/path/ ```