> 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/backtest-analysis/portfolio-viewer.md). # Portfolio Viewer The Portfolio View takes two or more of your Hydra Vision backtest exports and answers one question: > **If I had run these strategies together, on one account, what would that have looked like?** Each backtest you export is a single symbol running on its own. Real accounts don't work that way — you run GBPUSD, EURUSD and USDJPY at the same time, they share one balance, and they draw down at the same time or at different times. The Portfolio View combines your individual runs into one simulated account and shows you the combined profit, the combined drawdown, and — most importantly — whether your strategies protected each other or piled onto each other when things went wrong. {% hint style="info" %} **What this view is not** The Portfolio View does not give tuning advice, and it never says a symbol is misconfigured. It reports *where* risk sits in your basket; what you do about it is your call. A strategy that carries most of the drawdown may be exactly the aggressive allocation you intended. Bear in mind that the answers move with your settings. Change a step size on one symbol, re-run the backtest, and the strategy that "carried the drawdown" can easily become a different one. {% endhint %} *** ### Before you start The Portfolio View needs: | Requirement | Detail | | ------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | **2 to 8 backtest exports** | Fewer than two is not a portfolio. If you load more than eight, only the first eight are used. | | **One run per symbol** | Two backtests of the same symbol cannot be combined. Pick one. | | **Same account currency** | All runs must have been tested in the same deposit currency (all USD, all EUR, and so on). | | **Overlapping dates** | The runs must cover the same period. The view clips everything to the window all runs share, and refuses if that shared window is less than 60% of the shortest run. | | **Report version 3.0 or later** | Older reports are refused. Each run must also include its daily equity curve, and the timed drawdown estimate needs every run to record when its daily low happened — see The three drawdown figures. | Most of these are checked automatically when you load a basket. If something fails, the view tells you exactly what and why — see When the view refuses to combine. *** ### The account size — the one setting that matters At the top of the page is a box labelled **Account**. This is the size of the single, shared account you are simulating, and every percentage on the page is measured against it. Hydra Vision strategies size their positions in **fixed lots**. A backtest that made $300 on a $10,000 deposit would have made the same $300 on a $2,000 deposit — the lot sizes don't change with the balance. That has an important consequence: {% hint style="warning" %} **Deposits are never added together.** If you ran five backtests at $2,000 each, your portfolio is **not** a $10,000 account. The dollar profits and dollar drawdowns of each run are simply added together, and then you decide how big the account is that has to absorb them. The same $1,900 combined drawdown is 19% of a $10,000 account but only 3.8% of a $50,000 account. Same risk, very different percentage. Choose the account size you would actually trade with. {% endhint %} **To change the account size:** type a new number into the Account box and press Enter (or click elsewhere). The whole page recalculates. The small label beside the box tells you where the current value came from: * **from portal** — set by the platform when the basket was loaded * **default** — no value was supplied, so $10,000 is being used * **edited** — you typed in your own figure Changing the account size does not change any dollar figure on the page. It only changes what those dollars represent as a share of your account, and therefore which colour thresholds they cross. *** ### Reading the page, top to bottom #### Header The first line summarises the basket: how many strategies, the account size, the symbols included, and the date range being analysed. The date range is the **shared window** — the period all runs cover — not the full length of any single run. #### Notices Directly below the header you may see one or more coloured banners: * **Amber banners** are warnings. The basket was combined, but something is worth knowing — for example the runs used different brokers or tick modelling, or a run has been clipped to the shared window. Read these; they don't stop the analysis but they qualify it. * **Blue banners** are informational. The most common one notes that your runs use different setfiles, which is completely normal — each symbol plays its own strategy. A blue banner further down restates the account-size rule for the current basket. It's there so that anyone reading an exported PDF understands what the percentages mean. *** #### Diversification — the headline number The large percentage at the top of the page is your **diversification benefit**. It answers: > How much smaller was the combined worst drawdown than if I had run these strategies on separate accounts? It's calculated by adding up each run's standalone worst drawdown (the figure MetaTrader reports for that backtest on its own), then comparing that total to the worst drawdown of the combined account. Both dollar figures are shown beside it so you can see what the ratio is made of. | Reading | What it means | | ---------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | **0%** | No benefit at all. Your strategies drew down at the same time, by their full amounts. Effectively, they are one bet. | | **30%** | The combined worst drawdown was 30% smaller than the sum of the individual worst drawdowns. Some of the losses were offset by other strategies being in profit at that moment. | | **Higher** | Better. More of the individual drawdowns happened at different times and cancelled out. | {% hint style="info" %} A high diversification figure does **not** mean your account is safe — it means your strategies helped each other. A basket of five aggressive strategies can show excellent diversification and still produce an uncomfortable combined drawdown. Always read this number alongside the **Portfolio drawdown** tile below it. {% endhint %} **Colour thresholds** | Colour | Diversification | | -------- | --------------- | | 🟢 Green | 40% or more | | 🟡 Amber | 15% to 40% | | 🔴 Red | under 15% | *** #### The four summary tiles | Tile | What it shows | | ------------------------ | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | **Combined P\&L** | Net profit of the whole basket over the shared window, in currency and as a percentage of the account. Green if positive, red if negative. | | **Portfolio drawdown** | The worst peak-to-trough fall in combined equity, in currency and as a percentage of the account. This is the number the whole view exists to calculate. Green at 10% or below, amber from 10% to 20%, red above 20%. | | **Return per unit risk** | Combined P\&L divided by portfolio drawdown. A reading of 1.5 means you made $1.50 of profit for every $1 of worst-case drawdown you had to sit through. Green at 1.5 or above, amber from 0.75 to 1.5, red below 0.75. | | **Worst moment** | The date the combined account hit its deepest drawdown, and how far into the shared window that was ("day 41 of 155"). | *** #### Combined equity This chart is the whole basket as a single account. | Line | Meaning | | --------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | **Solid indigo line** | Combined equity at each daily close — the account value including open positions. | | **Thin grey line** | Combined balance — closed trades only. When equity sits well below balance, the basket is carrying open drawdown. | | **Shaded band** | The range within which the true intraday low could have fallen on each day. The top of the band is the daily close; the bottom assumes every strategy hit its own daily low at the very same instant. | | **Dashed amber line** | The **timed estimate** of the intraday low — where the combined equity most likely bottomed each day, worked out from the actual times each strategy hit its low. Only shown when every run records those times. | | **Red dot** | The worst moment — the point of maximum portfolio drawdown. | Hover over the chart to read exact values on any date. **The three drawdown figures** Beneath the chart are three drawdown readings. They exist because the backtest exports record one row per day, and a day's combined low depends on *when* within that day each strategy bottomed — something a daily row cannot fully capture. So the view reports the limits of what can be known: | Figure | How it's calculated | What it is | | ------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | **Daily closes** | Uses only end-of-day equity. | The **optimistic bound**. The true drawdown cannot be smaller than this. | | **Timed estimate** | Uses the time each strategy hit its daily low. Strategies whose lows fell within an hour of each other are assumed to have coincided; the rest are taken at their close. | The **best available estimate**. Needs the time of each daily low on every run. | | **Summed lows** | Assumes every strategy hit its daily low at the same instant. | The **pessimistic bound**. The true drawdown cannot be larger than this. | One of the three is marked **headline** — that's the figure used for the Portfolio drawdown tile, the diversification percentage and the risk attribution table. * When every run records the time of its daily lows, the **timed estimate** is the headline. * When at least one run does not, the timed estimate is unavailable and the **summed lows** figure is the headline. An amber "Untimed intraday lows" banner explains this. The view deliberately picks the pessimistic bound in this case: without timing data there's no way to tell whether the lows coincided, and understating risk would be the worse mistake. {% hint style="info" %} **Why the numbers are usually close together** In practice the gap between optimistic and pessimistic bounds is a few percent of the drawdown, not a multiple of it. If you see a wide gap, it means your strategies' worst intraday moments frequently landed on the same days. {% endhint %} *** #### When each strategy was under stress This is the most revealing panel in the view, and the one that catches what the others miss. Each Hydra Vision strategy trades in *grids* — clusters of positions that open, deepen and eventually close. Every grid has a moment of **peak open drawdown**: the point where it was furthest underwater before recovering (or closing). This chart plots those moments. * **Each row** is one symbol. * **Each circle** is one grid, placed on the date it hit peak drawdown. * **Circle size** is the size of that drawdown — bigger circle, deeper hole. * **Red circles** belong to the cluster described in the banner above the chart (see below). Hover over any circle to see the drawdown amount, how many positions were open at that moment, and how many positions the grid opened in total. **What to look for:** circles stacked vertically. If GBPUSD, EURUSD and GBPAUD all show large circles in the same week, those three strategies were all in trouble at the same time — and that's exactly when a shared account is at risk. **Which grids are shown** Only grids whose peak drawdown reached at least **1% of the account** are plotted, so the chart isn't cluttered with routine small grids. If fewer than eight grids clear that floor (common on large accounts), the eight deepest grids are shown instead so the panel is never empty. The caption above the chart tells you which rule applied. Because the floor scales with your account size, changing the Account figure changes which grids appear. **The cluster banner** Above the chart the view searches for the **10-day window** (5 days either side of a centre date) in which the most *different* symbols had a deep grid. If two or more symbols were caught in the same window, a banner reports it: * **Amber** — two strategies under stress together. * **Red** — three or more. The banner states the total open drawdown across those grids at once, as a percentage of your account. This is the simultaneous heat your account would have been carrying. {% hint style="warning" %} **Why this matters more than "worst drawdown dates"** Each backtest records the single date of its own worst drawdown. It's tempting to compare those dates across symbols and, if they're all different, conclude the strategies are independent. They may not be. A strategy can be deep underwater during a stressful week without that week being its *single worst* moment. This chart looks at every significant grid, not just the one worst point per symbol, and the banner spells out when the two readings disagree. {% endhint %} *** #### Risk attribution This table shows what your basket would look like with each strategy removed, one at a time. It tells you where profit and risk are concentrated.
ColumnMeaning
BasketThe first row is the full basket. Each row below is the basket without the named symbol.
P&LNet profit of that basket.
DrawdownWorst drawdown of that basket, recomputed from scratch on the remaining strategies.
DD % of accountThe same, as a percentage of your account size.
P&L ÷ DDReturn per unit of risk for that basket.
Δ P&LHow much profit changes when the symbol is removed. Always negative for a profitable symbol.
Δ DrawdownHow much the worst drawdown changes when the symbol is removed.
**How to read Δ Drawdown:** * **Large negative** (e.g. −60%) — removing this strategy would cut the worst drawdown by 60%. This strategy is where most of your risk sits. Shown in red when below −15%; the single largest contributor is highlighted with an amber row. * **Small negative** — removing it takes away a little risk and a little profit. It's pulling its weight. * **Positive** — removing this strategy would make drawdown *worse*. This is a genuine diversifier: it tends to be in profit when the others are in trouble, and it cushioned the account. Shown in green. Below the table, one or two sentences summarise the most notable finding — which strategy carries the largest share of drawdown for what share of profit, and whether any strategy is actively offsetting the others. {% hint style="info" %} **Attribution is not a verdict.** A strategy that carries 60% of the drawdown is not "broken". It may be your intended high-conviction position. It may be the strategy with the most exposure to a single event in the test period. And it will likely be a different symbol after your next set of backtests. Use this table to understand your basket, not to grade the symbols in it. {% endhint %} *** ### Colour thresholds at a glance | Metric | 🟢 Green | 🟡 Amber | 🔴 Red | | --------------------------------- | ---------------------- | ------------------ | ------------------ | | Diversification | ≥ 40% | 15% – 40% | < 15% | | Portfolio drawdown (% of account) | ≤ 10% | 10% – 20% | ≥ 20% | | Return per unit risk | ≥ 1.5 | 0.75 – 1.5 | < 0.75 | | Stress cluster | — | 2 symbols together | 3 or more together | | Δ Drawdown in attribution | positive (diversifier) | — | below −15% | Because two of these are percentages of the account, the colours change when you change the Account figure. That's intended: a $1,900 drawdown is a different proposition on a $5,000 account than on a $50,000 one. *** ### When the view refuses to combine Sometimes the view will show **"This basket cannot be combined"** instead of a report. This is deliberate. Some combinations would produce numbers that look reasonable but are wrong, and the view refuses rather than guess. The message lists every check that failed. | Message | Why | What to do | | --------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | **A portfolio needs at least 2 runs** | Fewer than two usable backtests were loaded. Empty or invalid files are ignored, so you may have loaded two files but only one was readable. | Add another export, or check that each file is a complete Hydra Vision backtest export. | | **Duplicate symbol** | Two of the loaded runs are backtests of the same symbol. | Remove one. A portfolio has one strategy per symbol. | | **Mixed account currencies** | The runs were tested with different deposit currencies. | Re-run the backtests in a common account currency. Dollar and euro drawdowns can't be added without a conversion rate, and the view won't invent one. | | **Report X is older than 3.0 and is no longer supported** | The report was exported by an EA build older than report version 3.0, which the view can no longer read. | Re-run the backtest on a current EA build and load the new report. | | **The drawdown guard bound during this run** | That run's **Extreme DD Veto** actually triggered during its backtest — it blocked new grids while open drawdown was above your **Extreme DD Threshold %**. That strategy behaved differently *because* of its own drawdown, so its results can't simply be added to others — on a shared account the veto would have seen the combined drawdown and fired at a different time. | The view only combines runs in which the veto never triggered, so this run can't be included as it is. | | **This report has no daily equity curve** | The run's report has no usable daily equity curve, so its drawdown path is unknown. Combining it would treat that run as flat for the whole window, hiding its drawdown and making the basket look safer than it is. | Re-run the backtest on a current EA build and load the new report. | | **The runs do not overlap in time** | The backtests cover different periods. | Re-run them over the same dates. | | **Only N days of overlap** | The runs overlap, but the shared window is less than 60% of the shortest run. Too little common ground for the combination to mean anything. | Re-run over a common period. | If there were also non-blocking warnings, they're listed at the bottom of the refusal under "Also noted". *** ### Warnings you may see These don't stop the analysis, but they qualify it. | Warning | What it means | | ----------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | **Clipped to the N-day window all runs share** | The runs don't cover identical dates, so the analysis uses only the overlapping period. The header dates show that window. Profit and drawdown figures cover the window only, not any run's full length. | | **Runs differ in broker, terminal build or tick modelling** | The backtests were produced under different execution assumptions — different spreads, different tick data quality. They can still be combined, but be aware the underlying simulations weren't identical. | | **\[Symbol] flagged its own export** | The backtest export includes a self-check warning, typically a small reconciliation difference between two internally computed figures. The text is shown as-is. Usually harmless; if the difference is large, re-export the backtest. | | **Calculated differently** | Some runs were exported before the EA changed how certain figures are worked out (13 Oct 2026) — grid costs, GridSense per-side net, Hydra drawdown or anchor-only rate. The banner names which. Those runs don't measure that figure the same way as the newer ones. Re-exporting the older runs on the current EA puts them on the same basis. | | **Untimed intraday lows** | At least one run does not record when its daily low happened, so the lows can't be lined up in time. Only the two outer bounds are available and the headline drawdown falls back to the pessimistic one. | *** ### Exporting a PDF Click **Export PDF** in the top bar to save the full report as an A4 PDF (`hydra-portfolio.pdf`). The PDF reflects the current account size and current theme (light or dark), and page breaks are placed between sections and table rows so nothing is cut mid-line. Set the account size *before* exporting — the PDF is a snapshot of what's on screen. *** ### Things to keep in mind **It's a simulation, not a replay.** The view adds up what each strategy did on its own. On a genuinely shared account, each symbol's drawdown protection would have been watching the *combined* balance, not its own, and could have stepped in earlier than any individual backtest shows. Treat the combined curve as a slightly optimistic picture of what would have happened — real behaviour would be the same or more cautious, never more aggressive. **Daily resolution.** The exports record one row per day. That's why drawdown is reported as a range with a best estimate rather than a single exact figure. The three bounds are honest about what the data can and can't tell you. **The answer moves with your settings.** Every number here depends on the specific setfiles in the backtests you loaded. Re-run one symbol with different settings and the diversification figure, the risk attribution and the stress clusters can all change. Re-run the Portfolio View whenever you re-run a backtest. **Fixed lots is the assumption.** The whole approach — adding dollar results and measuring against one account — rests on your strategies sizing in fixed lots rather than as a percentage of balance. Hydra Vision's default sizing works this way. If you've configured equity-based sizing, the combined figures will be less accurate. **Charts and figures are independent.** If a chart fails to draw (for example on a restricted network), the numbers above and below it are unaffected — the figures are calculated first, and the charts are drawn from them. *** ### Glossary
TermMeaning
BalanceAccount value counting closed trades only.
EquityAccount value including the floating profit or loss of open positions.
DrawdownThe fall from the highest equity reached so far to a subsequent low. "Worst" or "maximum" drawdown is the largest such fall over the whole period.
GridA cluster of positions Hydra Vision opens on one symbol in one direction, added to as price moves against the entry and closed together when the target is reached.
Peak open drawdownThe deepest a single grid went underwater before it recovered or closed.
Standalone drawdownThe worst equity drawdown a backtest recorded when run on its own, as reported by MetaTrader.
DiversificationHow much smaller the combined drawdown was than the sum of the standalone drawdowns.
Shared windowThe date range covered by every run in the basket. All figures are computed over this window only.
Leave-one-outThe method behind the risk attribution table: recompute the whole basket with one strategy removed, and compare.
BoundA limit on what the true value could be. The daily-closes figure is a floor on drawdown; the summed-lows figure is a ceiling.