What are backtests?

backtests are a way to visualize how a strategy would've performed, given historical data it's a cornerstone of developing trading strategies, since they give a general idea on what to expect in the future however, it's generally bad practice to rely solely on backtests when making a decision on which strategies to run backtests do not account for potential price slippage disclaimer backtests are optimized using historical data under ideal conditions and not a guarantee of future results