> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://help.hydravision.ai/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://help.hydravision.ai/products/asset-profiler/understand-your-asset.md). # Understand your Asset Rely less on blind faith and more on actual market behaviour and broker provided data. Asset Profiler answers a critical question: **how far apart should your grid positions be on this**\ **asset?** Every Hydra Vision strategy is built on a minimum step, the smallest price gap the engine allows\ between two positions in a grid. Get it right and everything downstream has a chance. Get it wrong\ and no amount of tuning elsewhere will rescue it. Traditionally you find that number by running dozens of back tests per asset. Asset Profiler\ measures it directly from the asset's own behaviour, in one run, simplifying a critical part of configuring your Hydra strategy. ### What you get Asset Profiler is a separate EA, that is shipped with every version of Hydra Vision. It can be used without your Private Key and is intended as an Information gathering tool (it is not a market prediction agent). Install the EA into any broker MT5 terminal that is connected to a live account. The live account is crucial as symbols from demo accounts do not bear the same configuration of a live account. {% hint style="info" %} **Which dates to profile.** The date range you choose sets the window for the spread sample. Three months is the minimum for that sample to be representative, and data much older than about six months tends to describe a market that has moved on. Volatility and retrace timing don't follow your date range: they use a fixed amount of history ending at the last date of the run (about a year of fifteen-minute bars and the last \~80 days of four-hour bars). [Running a Profile](/products/asset-profiler/running-a-profile.md) explains both windows. When the profile is for a back test, one approach is to end the profile where the back test starts, so the profile only knows what a live trader would have known at that point. The same principle applies if you use market regime settings. {% endhint %} Clicking on the uploaded Asset Profile from the list will bring up the Asset analysis, which contains some key information, useful for setfile configuration and later, back test results analysis.
The headline is a **range** of step sizes the asset can support, a floor and a ceiling, with everything in between allowable. Under it the report gives the same range as a value for the **Minimum Step Size** setting, in the unit Hydra Vision reads it in; [Ticks, pips and price](/products/asset-profiler/ticks-pips-and-price.md) explains that unit for each kind of asset. Around it sits the evidence in data: what it costs you to open a pair of positions, how far price has to come back for PCL to close them, how long that usually takes, what holding overnight costs, and whether the time of day you trade makes a material difference. ### Run it before you configure anything The Profiler is a **pre-configuration** tool. The intended order is: 1. Run the Profiler on the asset you're considering. 2. Read the report, and decide whether the asset suits what you want to do. 3. Use the step range as the starting point for **Minimum Step Size** in the setfile (the units are on [Ticks, pips and price](/products/asset-profiler/ticks-pips-and-price.md)). 4. Back test from there, moving within the range. Running it after you've already built a setfile still tells you something useful. But its value is\ highest before, when it can save you the thirty back tests you'd otherwise spend finding the\ neighbourhood. {% hint style="info" %} **A profile belongs to one symbol, on one broker, over one window.** EURUSD at your broker and EURUSD at another are different assets as far as the Profiler is concerned, because the spread and swap are different. The report header always shows which combination you're looking at. {% endhint %} ### It measures, it doesn't predict The Profiler reads real tick history and reports what that history did. It does not forecast, it does not tell you whether an asset will make money, and it does not know what strategy you intend to run. A verdict of **Tradeable** means the asset's movement and cost structure can support a grid. It is not a prediction of profit. The next page sets out the boundaries properly, it's worth reading before you draw conclusions from your first report. {% hint style="success" %} Modelled outputs use fixed default assumptions rather than your own settings, so that the answer isn't curve fitted to one configuration and stays comparable between assets. The model is the simplest PCL close: the most profitable position clearing one losing position, with a profit target worth 35% of the step and costs allowed to take up to 35% of that target. Real grids are deeper, and as a rough scale a shallow grid needs about one and a half to two steps of retrace, a deeper one two and a half to four. That scale is a rule of thumb, not something the Profiler calculates. [Scope and Limits](/products/asset-profiler/scope-and-limits.md) sets out what is and isn't modelled. {% endhint %}