Build your first strategy

This walkthrough builds one real strategy from nothing: a mean-reversion system on BTC/USDT that buys when the market comes out of oversold and sells when it gets stretched. You will backtest it, let an AI Squad argue about it, and run it on simulated capital.

It takes about twenty minutes and costs nothing — no exchange connection is needed until the very last section, which you can skip.

Two ways to build a strategy#

There are two routes to the same place, and you can mix them freely.

If you just want to see it happen, open the assistant in the sidebar and type something like "Create a strategy that goes long BTC/USDT on the 1h timeframe when RSI drops below 30, with a 2% trailing stop." It will pick the ticker and timeframe, add the RSI indicator, write the entry and exit rules, and set the stop — the same strategy this tutorial builds by hand. Strategies it creates are always in backtest or paper mode; it never turns anything live.

This walkthrough takes the builder path, because doing it once by hand is how the pieces stop being mysterious. See the assistant for the other route in full.

What you will end up with#

Step 1 — Create the strategy#

Click New Strategy in the sidebar. Fill in the form:

The Trading Venue below defaults to the platform's paper exchange, which is exactly what you want — simulated fills on live Binance prices, no account needed. Leave it on that default.

Press Create Strategy and you land on the strategy page, with tabs across the top: Overview, Indicators, Signals, Risk Management, and the rest.

Step 2 — Add the indicator#

Your rules need something to read. Open the Indicators tab, click Add Indicator, and pick RSI from the picker. Set its length to 14 and save.

You have now created a line your rules can reference, named after the indicator: RSI.rsi. Every indicator publishes one or more named lines like this, and you can also compare against raw price — open, high, low, close, volume — with no indicator needed.

Step 3 — Add the signals#

Open the Signals tab and click Add Signal to create a signal group. Call it Reversion. A group is just a named container for rules.

The entry rule#

Click Add Rule on the group and set:

• Action — enter position
• Direction — long

Then, under Conditions, add one condition row:

Save the rule. It reads: when RSI crosses up through 30, open a long.

Why "goes above" and not "is greater than"#

This is the single most important idea in the signal builder, so it is worth stopping on.

• goes above / goes below are events. They are true only on the one candle where the line crosses the level. Use them to open and close positions.
• is greater than / is less than and friends are states. They stay true for every candle the line is above the level. Use them as filters alongside another condition.

Picking is greater than 30 for an entry would mean "enter long on every candle where RSI is above 30", which is almost always true and will try to enter constantly. goes above 30 fires once, as the market leaves oversold.

The exit rule#

Add a second rule to the same group:

• Action — exit position
• Direction — long
• Line RSI.rsi · Condition goes above · Fixed value 70

That closes the position when the market becomes overbought.

Step 4 — Set the risk#

Open Risk Management and add a stop loss. For this strategy use a trailing stop of 2%: it follows the price up as the trade works and closes you out if the market gives back 2% from its best point.

Set the stop before you look at any results. If you backtest without one and add it afterwards, every number you just read described a different strategy.

Step 5 — Backtest it#

Press Run Backtest at the top of the strategy page. It takes roughly 30–60 seconds.

When it finishes, open the Reports tab. Four numbers matter more than the rest:

That last one decides how much to trust the other three. A strategy with nine trades and a Sharpe of 3 has told you almost nothing; a hundred trades with a Sharpe of 1.2 is a real signal.

Open View Chart to see the entries and exits drawn on the candles. This is usually where you notice a rule doing something you did not intend.

Step 6 — Have a committee review it (optional)#

If you want a second opinion before committing simulated capital, open the Squad tab and map a Squad to this strategy. If you have not created one, do that first from Squads in the sidebar.

The Squad reads the same market you are trading and argues it from four angles — technical, fundamentals, news and sentiment — with a bull and a bear on each. Two managers then reach a verdict. A Squad never places a trade — it records a decision, which your strategy reads as an indicator and acts on under its own rules.

One Squad can serve many strategies, so you build a view you trust once and reuse it. See hedge-fund Squads for the full picture.

Step 7 — Paper-trade it#

This is the step that actually tells you something.

From your strategy list, press Paper Trade on the strategy. In the Start Paper Trading dialog, give it a starting balance — 10,000 is a sensible default — and confirm. Simulated capital, real prices, on the platform's shared paper exchange. No exchange account required.

Then, back on the strategy, turn on Enabled for Trading in the Overview tab. That is the switch that controls whether positions are actually entered. Without it the strategy runs but never opens anything.

Now leave it alone. A 1h strategy might take days to produce a handful of trades, and watching it will only tempt you to interfere.

Step 8 — Read the result#

When it has traded, open Positions in the sidebar and filter to this strategy. Beyond profit and loss, three figures tell you whether it is working:

• Win rate with profit factor — a strategy can win 40% of the time and still be excellent, if the wins are bigger than the losses. Profit factor above 1 means the winners outweigh the losers.
• Expectancy — what you should expect the next trade to make. This is the number to multiply by "trades per month".
• Max drawdown — the worst stretch. Ask yourself honestly whether you would have kept it running through that.

Compare these against the backtest. Paper results that are dramatically worse usually mean the backtest was overfit — the strategy learned the past rather than the market.

Going live#

Only when a strategy has a paper track record you actually believe.

Connect an exchange under Trading, then press Go Live on the strategy and allocate capital to it. Start with an amount you would be relaxed about losing entirely, because the first thing live trading tests is your assumptions about fills and fees.

Where to go next#

• Signal rules — everything the condition builder can express.
• Grid search — test many parameter variations at once, and how to tell a robust setting from a lucky one.
• Strategy recipes — three more complete builds.