A backtest on a single symbol tells you one thing: HOW your strategy worked on that one chart. It doesn’t tell you whether you found a robust edge or just a stock that happened to cooperate. The only way to know the difference is backtesting the same strategy across a whole group of symbols and seeing if the results hold up.
Maybe you want to backtest your strategy across a full watchlist. Maybe you want to run it against every stock you actually hold. The Group Strategy Tester is built for exactly that: pick a strategy, point it at a list of symbols, and get every result ranked in one table. If the name is new to you, that’s because it is — this is the tool formerly known as Variance Explorer, renamed, redesigned, and moved front and center in the Strategy Tester.
What Is the Group Strategy Tester?
The Group Strategy Tester runs backtest combinations: one or more strategies, across one or more timeframes and backtest depths, against as many symbols as you want to throw at it. Load five symbols on one timeframe and you’re testing 5 combinations. Load a 40-symbol watchlist across two timeframes and you’re testing 80. Every combination gets a full backtest, and every result lands in a single sortable table so the strongest and weakest performers are obvious at a glance.
Here’s what that unlocks:
- Backtest one strategy across an entire watchlist (including a watchlist of your portfolio holdings) to see where it actually earns its keep.
- Compare timeframes and depths in one run to find out whether your daily strategy holds up on the 4-hour, or falls apart outside its favorite regime.
- Run multiple strategies head-to-head on the same symbols and let the numbers pick a winner.
How to Backtest a Strategy Across a Watchlist
Open the Strategy Tester at the bottom of your chart and you’ll see three tiles: test a strategy on a single symbol, test a strategy across a list of symbols, or test multiple strategies on a single symbol. The second and third tiles open the Group Strategy Tester.
From there, setup is a numbered four-step flow:
- Select one or more strategies to test. Any strategy in your library works, whether it’s your own, built-in, or a subscription strategy. Check several to run them against each other.
- Pick one or more resolutions. Daily, 4-hour, 15-minute: whatever your strategy is designed for. Selecting more than one multiplies your combinations.
- Choose the backtest depth. Set how far back the test runs, in candles or by date range. You can select multiple depths to see how results change across shorter and longer histories.
- Enter your symbols. Type them in one at a time, or skip that entirely and load a watchlist.
That last step is where this gets powerful. Click load a watch list and you can pull in any list you’ve built, filtered by type: your custom lists, sector and industry lists, your holdings, or full indexes. Load your earnings watchlist. Load the sector you trade. Load a watchlist of your portfolio holdings and backtest your strategy across every position you own. It’s the simplest way to answer the question “how would this strategy have treated my actual portfolio?”
Index lists work too. Load the Nasdaq 100 and you’re one click away from backtesting your strategy across 99 of the largest names in the market in a single run.
Hit the run button (it tells you exactly how many combinations you’re about to test) and the Group Strategy Tester gets to work.
Test Multiple Strategies on a Single Symbol
The same tool answers the opposite question. Maybe you don’t trade fifty symbols — you trade one, and you have three or four strategy ideas competing for it. That’s the third tile: Test multiple strategies on a single symbol, sitting right next to the watchlist option when you open the Strategy Tester.
The setup is identical, just inverted. In step one, check every strategy you want in the running — your MACD cross, your opening range breakout, your moving average reclaim — and keep the symbol list short. Every strategy gets backtested on the same chart, the same timeframe, and the same history, so the comparison is apples to apples. The ranked table settles the question every trader argues with themselves about: which of my strategies is actually better here? Check the boxes, hit run, and let the data end the debate.
And because strategies, symbols, timeframes, and depths all multiply together, you can go as wide as your plan allows. Two strategies across four symbols, two timeframes, and two depths is 32 combinations in a single run — a full grid showing not just which strategy wins, but where and on what settings it wins.
How to Read Your Backtest Results
Results land in a heatmapped table with one row per combination. Green shading marks relative strength within the group for each metric, so the standouts surface without any squinting: which variant produced the best net performance, which had the shallowest drawdown, which combination delivered the best reward-to-risk.
The columns are up to you. Right-click any column header to sort, hide, or manage columns, and choose from dozens of metrics: Net Performance across multiple windows, Reward/Risk Ratio, Max Drawdown, Average Return, Expectancy, Win rate, Sharpe, Sortino, CAGR, Beta versus the asset, realized volatility, and more. Sort by whatever defines “good” for your style of trading.
Below the table, three chart panels visualize the same results, each with configurable axes:
- Bubble charts plot any two metrics against each other, with a third controlling bubble size. They’re the fastest way to spot outliers, like the one symbol with a great win rate hiding a brutal drawdown.
- Column charts — new in this release — rank every combination on a single metric with a median reference line drawn across the group. One glance tells you which symbols sit above the group’s median and which drag it down.
Want to keep working outside the platform? The download icon exports the full results table.
Turn Results Into Action
A backtest is only useful if it changes what you do next, so results are wired directly into your workflow. Right-click any row in the table, or any bubble or column in the charts, to open the symbol context menu. From there you can add a color flag to mark the promising names, or send the symbol to a watch list without leaving the tester.
That turns a big test into a tight shortlist in about a minute: run your strategy across 50 names, flag the handful that clear your bar, push them to a fresh watchlist, and carry that list straight into the Market Scanner or alerts.
How Many Symbols Can I Backtest at Once?
Group Strategy Tester limits are counted in combinations, not symbols. One strategy on one timeframe across 40 symbols is 40 combinations; add a second timeframe and it’s 80. Every plan includes 53 combinations per run by default, and higher tiers raise the ceiling:
| Plan | Combinations per run |
|---|---|
| Standard & Legacy Plans | 53 |
| Premium | 150 |
| Enhanced | 250 |
| Advanced | 510 |
That means a Premium plan comfortably covers the full Nasdaq 100 on a single timeframe, and Enhanced and Advanced open the door to bigger lists, multi-timeframe runs, and strategy shootouts at serious scale. Very large indexes like the S&P 500 are best tackled on the higher tiers, or in slices: test a sector at a time and work your way through. See plans and pricing for details.
Frequently Asked Questions
What happened to Variance Explorer?
It became Group Strategy Tester. Same engine, new name, redesigned interface, and a much more prominent home inside the Strategy Tester.
Is the Group Strategy Tester a portfolio backtester?
Not in the traditional sense. A classic portfolio backtester simulates one combined portfolio with position sizing and capital allocation across holdings. The Group Strategy Tester runs an independent backtest on each symbol and ranks the results side by side, which makes it the right tool for a different question: not “how would this basket have performed?” but “on which of these symbols does my strategy actually work?” or “which strategies worked the best of my symbol” If you want to test against your portfolio, load a watchlist of your holdings and run it across every position.
Can I backtest a strategy across the entire S&P 500?
The S&P 500 list contains 502 symbols, so a full single-timeframe run needs the Advanced plan’s 510 combinations. In practice, the better approach on any tier is testing it in slices, one sector at a time.
Do I need to know how to code?
No. Strategies are built in the point-and-click editor or described in plain English for the AI to configure, and the Group Strategy Tester runs any strategy in your library, including built-in and subscription strategies.
Try Group Strategy Tester Today
Open the Strategy Tester, choose “Test a strategy across a list of symbols,” load a watchlist, and hit run. In the time it used to take to backtest one chart, you’ll know how your strategy performs across every name you care about.
Stop testing one chart at a time.
