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Bot Backtester Troubleshooting: Limitations & Common Issues
Bot Backtester Troubleshooting: Limitations & Common Issues

Troubleshoot your trading bot backtests: common causes of no trades, limitations, and best practices for accurate results.

Pete Darby avatar
Written by Pete Darby
Updated this week

The Cryptohopper bot backtester helps optimize trading strategies but sometimes produces no trades. Common issues include unmet trailing stop-buy conditions, insufficient funds, missing strategies, or overly strict configurations. This guide explains these problems and outlines system limitations to improve your backtest results.

Common Reasons for No Trades in Backtests

  1. Trailing Stop-Buy Orders Not Being Triggered

    Problem: Trailing stop-buy conditions are not met during the backtest period. Solution: The trailing stop-buy functionality is properly simulated, but the configured price movement percentage may not be reached during your backtest period. Consider using a lower trailing stop-buy percentage that's more likely to be triggered by typical market movements within your backtest timeframe.

  2. Insufficient Starting Funds

    Problem: Not enough funds added at the start of the backtest to execute trades. Solution: When initiating a backtest, always enter an amount of funds that exceeds your minimum trade amount configured in your Base config. You can add starting funds in the popup before you initiate the backtest.

  3. Missing Trading Strategy or Trading Signals

    Problem: No configuration for how the trading bot should identify buying opportunities.
    Solution: Always ensure you have configured at least one trading strategy and/or trading signals. Without these, the bot has no source for generating buy signals.

  4. Overly Strict Strategy Configuration

    Problem: Strategy requirements too stringent to trigger buy signals.
    Solutions:

    • Reduce the number of "required" technical indicators that must signal simultaneously

    • Utilize "Keep candle for X candles" in the strategy designer to extend signal validity

    • Test your trading strategy in the strategy backtester first to verify it generates sufficient buy signals

    • Begin with simpler trading strategies to learn how the backtest functions properly

Backtester Limitations

Time and Period Constraints

  • Maximum backtest period is limited to 1 month

  • New backtests become available 24 hours after starting a previous one (at the same time)

  • Processing time required before results are available

Daily Testing Limits by Subscription

  • Explorer: 1 backtest per day

  • Adventure: 5 backtests per day

  • Hero: 10 backtests per day

  • Hero subscribers can run 2 bot backtests simultaneously; others are limited to 1 at a time

Feature Limitations

  • Triggers are not supported in backtesting

  • TradingView Alerts cannot be backtested

  • Backtester checks sell settings only once per minute (real bots check more frequently)

  • Strategy checking moments may differ slightly from real-world behavior

  • The bot backtest functionality is only available on our website, not in our iOS and Android apps

Log Limitations

  • Maximum of 500 logs displayed per selected period

  • Best Practice: Select shorter time periods when reviewing logs to see more detailed bot activity without hitting the 500 log limit

Accuracy Considerations

  • When testing illiquid trading pairs (low volume), profit and loss figures may be extreme as the backtest doesn't account for limited exchange liquidity

  • Past performance shown in backtests does not guarantee future results

  • Backtests provide approximations rather than exact predictions of bot behavior

Best Practices for Effective Backtesting

  • Test across multiple time periods representing different market conditions (bull, bear, neutral markets)

  • Document strategy adjustments using the Notes feature

  • Check the Assets tab to see how much of your funds are being utilized

  • Adjust Base config buy amounts if you want to increase the amount invested at any time

  • Review the detailed Logs to understand exactly how your bot is functioning

If you notice any bugs in the backtester, please report them so we can continue improving this tool.

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