Skip to main content

Trading Workflow and Terms

TradeJS uses standard systematic-trading terms. The terms below distinguish research, validation, and live execution throughout the documentation.

Trading Objects​

  • Strategy: deterministic rules that transform market data and current state into a decision.
  • Configuration: the parameters used by a strategy, including risk and exit rules. A configuration is meaningful only with its strategy version, timeframe, and market universe.
  • Universe: the set of symbols eligible for evaluation. A deployment or an individual strategy can narrow this set.
  • Signal: a strategy decision such as a possible long entry, short entry, exit, or no action. A signal is not proof that an order was accepted or filled.
  • Order: an instruction sent to a venue. Its lifecycle includes submission, acknowledgement, rejection, partial fills, fills, and cancellation.
  • Position: the resulting market exposure. Position management continues even when new entries are paused.

Research and Validation​

  • Backtest: a simulation over historical data. Its result depends on data quality, fees, slippage, latency, fill rules, and other execution assumptions.
  • Parameter grid: a set of parameter combinations evaluated by a backtest. Searching a large grid increases overfitting risk and requires independent validation.
  • Out-of-sample test: evaluation on data that was not used to select or tune the configuration.
  • Replay: evaluation of a specific deployed configuration over historical closed candles. Replay is used to reproduce decisions and diagnose differences; it is not a substitute for a sound research design.
  • Runtime parity: comparison between decisions recorded during live evaluation and decisions reconstructed for the same symbols and time window.

Live Trading​

  • Deployment: a named live setup in tradejs.config.ts that binds a connector, account, strategies, configurations, and symbol selection.
  • Live evaluation: processing newly closed candles and recording strategy decisions without necessarily placing orders.
  • Live execution: live evaluation with order placement explicitly enabled.
  • Runtime record: a timestamped record of live decisions, orders, or fills, together with the strategy, package, and configuration versions needed for diagnosis.

The documentation uses live for activity driven by current market data and production for the deployed environment. Neither word implies that order placement is enabled.

  1. Define the hypothesis and execution assumptions.
  2. Backtest a limited, justified parameter set.
  3. Validate out of sample and across relevant market regimes.
  4. Freeze the strategy version and complete configuration.
  5. Replay the deployed configuration and verify decision parity.
  6. Run live evaluation without order placement.
  7. If risk controls and evidence are acceptable, begin a bounded live rollout.

See How backtests work and From backtest to live trading for the corresponding TradeJS commands.