Costs: spread, commission and slippage
Every live entry and exit carries a cost: spread, commission and sometimes slippage. A test that ignores costs makes results look better than they are. Tickrivo’s simulation takes cost assumptions such as commission, spread and slippage into account; when you read a result, check those assumptions.
Fills: orders do not always fill at your price
In fast or thin markets an order can fill at a different price from the one you planned. Tickrivo does not model real liquidity or the full tick stream, so practice is not a replacement for real execution.
Data: not every period or symbol is complete
Data coverage changes from period to period and symbol to symbol, and some dates may have no data at all. Do not treat crypto perpetual data as the same series as spot. If you use your own CSV, make sure you chose the file’s time zone and format correctly (for example Dukascopy UTC or HistData EST).
See markets and data for coverage details.
Hindsight bias
Knowing the outcome on a historical chart makes decisions easier. That is why replay asks you to write the plan before opening candles: once a trade has started, jumping to the past is locked. Blind practice hides date and pair labels so you decide from the chart alone. It is an exercise, not a security feature.
Emotion and discipline
With real money the pressure grows; breaking the plan, moving a stop or closing early gets easier. You cannot fully reproduce that in practice, but you can record it. The trading journal and RivoScope show how closely you followed your plan.
Few trades and overfitting
A result from a few trades can be chance. Tuning a rule to one period also flatters the result. Test the same rule across periods and several sessions, and look at the strategy comparison in Performance.
How to narrow the gap while you practice
- Enter realistic cost and risk settings
- Write the plan before opening the candle and do not change it after the trade starts
- Test across different periods and markets
- Write the reason for every trade in the journal
- Read the result together with the data coverage
These steps are covered hands-on in the backtest guide.