Strategies
What a Lab strategy is, how to create one, every setting of the strategy editor, the Draft · Tested · Paper · Live stages, and saving, archiving and reopening from the Strategies rail.
What this is for. A strategy is the saved description of an idea — whose trades count, which markets, how a copy enters and how big it is, when it exits — that backtests and paper runs execute. This page covers strategies that follow wallets; a strategy on your own market rules, with no wallet, is on Your own rules.
Create one
Any of these saves a new strategy as a Draft:
- Ask the assistant — it saves the strategy it proposes (you see it in the canvas).
- A template: on a new chat, under Or start from a template, press Use this on a card. Each card says Sports or Non-sports and its evidence (Weak, Promising, Strong or Not rated yet); Details shows its per-$10 result, sureness (t), copies a day and period.
- The rail: + beside Strategies → Blank strategy (the top 50 wallets by copier return over 60 days, non-sports, crypto left out) or From a saved ranking (one entry per ranking saved in the Ranking Builder).
- Other pages: Copy in the Lab on a trader page, Backtest in the Lab on the Builder, Backtest or paper-trade this board on the Copy Engine.
How many strategies you can keep is per plan (plan table); at the limit, saving answers "Your plan keeps N strategies; archive or delete one first."
The strategy page
Open a strategy from its rail row. The page has, in order: a summary; a Next steps panel (Test it on past trades, Paper-trade on live books, Edit with the assistant, and Go live · not available yet); Settings; Advanced settings; and the strategy's Tests and Paper runs.
Settings
| Setting | Choices |
|---|---|
| Budget | $100 · $500 · $1,000 · $5,000 · $25,000, or another amount ($10 to $100,000,000) |
| Size | Fixed $, % of the trader or % of my budget, with a smallest and largest copy — opens the size panel |
| Markets | Non-sports, Sports, before kickoff, Sports, in play; tap a category to leave it out |
| Risk | Careful (at most 30 % of the budget open, a 5 % daily loss stop, 10 copies a day, one per event) · Balanced (at most 60 % open, a 10 % daily loss stop, 40 copies a day) · Bold (no caps beyond the budget) |
| Exit | Hold to the result · Sell when the trader sells · Sell a day later · Sell an hour later · Sell before kickoff (sports before kickoff only) |
A default nobody picked is labelled The default, not chosen yet.
Advanced settings
Who to follow — the Wallet source:
- A ranking of copy history: rank wallets on a copy score over a Window (days) (14–120, default 60), with Minimum positions (default 20), Follow the top (1–300, default 25), Skip the first, Re-rank every (days) (default 30) and One wallet per operator (on by default: wallets run by one operator count once).
- A saved Builder ranking: follow the top (up to 200) of a ranking you saved.
- The Copy Engine board: Sleeve A or Sleeve B, follow the top (up to 100).
- A list of wallets: your own list; each wallet can carry its own rules.
- My own rules (no wallet; Lab Pro and up) — see Your own rules.
When a signal counts — Trades that count: Buys (default), Sells or Buys and sells; Which way: Follow (default) or Against (bet the other side — fading the trader); Wait for agreement: copy every listed buy, or only when 2 or 3 wallets agree within a window (0.25–72 h); Which of the trader's buys count: Orders that took the book (default), Resting orders that were hit or Any fill; the smallest buy that counts (default $1) and how fast its buys must reach the qualifying amount (default 10 minutes); and the same choices for sales.
Which markets — market types, categories to leave out, the leader's price range (default 0.03–0.97), at most how many days to the market's end (default 10), at least how many hours before kickoff, and the qualifying amount (default $5).
How the order is sent — Market order (take the asks) or Limit order (rest at my price), a limit priced from the leader's price, the best bid or the best ask (−30 to +5¢), Good for a number of minutes (default 60), until kickoff or until the market ends, Post-only (on by default), and When it expires: Cancel the rest (default) or Buy the rest at the ask.
How a copy enters — Instant or Patient; Pay at most (¢ above the leader): 0, 1, 2, 3 or 5¢ or Any price (default 1¢); Your delay (seconds) (default 1); Give up after (seconds) (default 60); and Skip if the leader sold first (on by default).
How an entry fills — Take what's there (default) or All or nothing, with retries for the rest.
How big — the copy size (default $10 per copy, or a share of the trader's dollars or of the strategy's value), which of the trader's buys to copy (the trade that triggered or every add), a smallest and largest copy, the Bankroll ($) (default $1,000), and caps: at most open, at most copies a day, stop for the day after losing, one copy per event.
How it exits — add + Take profit, + Stop loss, + Sell after a time, + Sell before kickoff or + Sell when the trader sells (all of it on the first sale, by default, or the same share it sold).
The size panel
Size opens a preview titled At this size, on the last 30 days: copies a day, copy size, money in
play (an estimate) and Book held your size — how often the recorded order book could have taken a
copy that big. By API: POST /v1/lab/size-preview.
Stages
A strategy moves through four stages, shown as a stepper on its rail row and page:
| Stage | Means |
|---|---|
| Draft | Saved, not tested since its last edit |
| Tested | At least one backtest of the current settings |
| Paper (Paper trading) | A paper run is going; Passed the paper gate once 50 copies have resolved with a positive result |
| Live | Not available yet: it will need 50 resolved paper copies with a positive result, from a wallet only you control |
Archived strategies leave the list. Saving an edit sends a strategy back to Draft; its past backtests keep the settings they ran with.
Save, rename, archive, reopen
- Rename: edit the name at the top of the strategy page (up to 120 characters).
- Save: any edit shows an Unsaved changes bar with Save; Saved. confirms it. Save and backtest does both.
- Archive / Unarchive: on the strategy page. Archived strategies are under Archived (N) at the foot of the rail; open one to unarchive it. Clean up N empty or duplicate drafts archives drafts (it never deletes).
- Delete: on the strategy page — Delete this strategy and its paper runs? Its backtests stay in your history. — or from a rail row, where Archive instead is offered.
- Reopen: click the strategy's row under Strategies, or Ask the assistant about "…" on the row to discuss it in a chat.
Related
- Backtesting · Paper trading · Your own rules
- The Lab assistant
- Plans & billing — saved strategies per plan
Strategy Lab
Test a trading idea before any money is at risk — strategies, backtests, paper trading, your own rules and the Lab assistant, how they fit together, who gets what, and the API behind it.
Backtesting
What a Lab backtest is, how to run one, the queue and per-plan caps, how to read the report — the verdict, the fair baseline, the fill model and its measured optimism — and the final test.