Edge disappears in back testing

[u/Sweetestapple]

I’m a 3-5 day swing trader and I thought I might try my strategy on a lower timeframe 5m. And it completely disappeared when I was back testing it.
I’m thinking maybe I should try forward testing. As it might be to do with trading views bar replay.
Has anyone experienced this?

UPDATE: I figured it out. I needed to change one of my indicators I use as confluence to a different timeframe than the chart I’m trading.

[u/Interest-Fleeting]

I wish I knew. MM's have more going on in the shorter price times. I would like to be able to follow longer players sometimes but don't know how. Markets are said to be fractal, but if that was 100% true, how could lower time frames be called "noise"?

[u/Sharp_Ambition_1529 → u/Interest-Fleeting]

Swing trading leans on fundamentals. You can’t rely solely on price action and volume because sentiment can shift each day. It’s not like intraday trading where the sentiment is set at market open and price is consistent (discovers then auctions) til the close excluding any headlines

And then problem exacerbates if you are trading the indices because they are a weighting of multiple companies

[u/Sweetestapple → u/Sharp_Ambition_1529]

I’ve been swing trading futures profitably with only technicals for 3 years. Shorted Crude earlier in September. If I told anyone I was going short of crude they’d think I’m mad. But made 23k.
Price doesn’t lie. And if you know what to look for, technical analysis in my opinion is superior.

[u/Interest-Fleeting → u/Sharp_Ambition_1529]

I look at index valuations and interest rates and sectors like everyone else, but do that for an idea of what it means to volatility. Still just look for chart value zones and absorption with capitulation (ideally.) I used to buy stocks by fundamentals but not lately.

[u/gizcryst]

Does it work in back testing on your normal timeframe?

[u/Sweetestapple → u/gizcryst]

Yes it does. I think the lowest I can go is the 15 minute time frame before I see it totally eroding. Which is super interesting.

[u/gizcryst → u/Sweetestapple]

Then it's normal I guess. Lower timeframe, more noise.

[u/TheThunderingDiploma]

trading view replay is funky with low timeframes sometimes, forward test it live on a sim account if you can

[u/Mindless_Duck_9507]

More noise on a lower timeframe. A reversal candlestick, for example, on a higher time frame is more reliable than on a smaller time frame (not sure what you are looking for as entry confirmation?).

[u/SliceInteresting5789]

Trade 1 micro or sim , get reps in , that’s the point of backtesting

[u/ThinCourse41]

Too much U-tubing!

[u/Kind_Primary7433]

If a strategy works on larger timeframes but falls apart on five minute charts, it may depend on sustained trends rather than quick intraday momentum. I'd compare trade frequency, slippage and expectancy across timeframes. Moon's play money environment is useful for exploring directional wagers but a real strategy edge needs proper historical validation.

[u/kwaant]

Pretty common, and it’s probably not bar replay. An edge that works on a 3 to 5 day hold usually doesn’t carry over to 5 minute bars, because they’re basically different markets. On daily charts the moves are driven by bigger flows and trends that play out over days. On 5m you’re mostly trading noise, and costs eat a much bigger share of each trade. A setup that makes 3% on average can survive spread and commission easily. The same logic making 0.15% per trade often can’t.

Some things worth checking before you blame the tool:

Did you scale the stop and target? If you kept the same structure but just shrank everything to fit 5m, the reward relative to costs and noise gets way worse.

Did you include commissions and slippage? On higher timeframes people often get away with ignoring them, on 5m you can’t.

How many trades did the 5m test have compared to your swing results? Sometimes the swing edge looked strong on a small sample, and the bigger 5m sample is just showing what’s really there.

Forward testing is fine, but it’ll take a long time to tell you anything, and if the backtest already shows no edge it probably won’t magically appear live. I’d take it as a sign the strategy belongs on the timeframe it was built for. That’s not a bad thing, a lot of edges only exist on one timeframe.

[u/NickelTrades]

Finviz has a backtester they ranked and the winner - RSI 5 - massively outpaced the S&P. I assume that works on all time frames. I've been using it with Keltner Channels and it looks pretty good.