Every trading product shows you an equity curve. Almost none of them show you the trades behind it.
A screenshot can be cropped, started on a good day, and ended on a better one. A trade log cannot. It has every loss in it, dated, with the price it filled at. So before you trust any strategy, any signal service, anyone who shows you results, ask for one thing: the CSV.
This page is the list of what to ask for, why each item matters, and where we answer it ourselves.
Each one has three parts: what to ask for, why it matters, and where Clara Systems answers it. If a vendor can answer all ten with files and pages, you are looking at something real. If the answers are screenshots and promises, you are looking at marketing.
1 · Every trade: the trade log, usually exported as a CSV file.
Ask for the full trade log, wins and losses, with entry, exit, time and size, in a file you can open and sort. This is the one thing that cannot be dressed up.
2 · The losses next to the gains.
Ask for the worst month, the longest losing streak, and the average loss next to the average win. A strategy that only shows its gains is hiding the half you will actually live through.
3 · How drawdown is measured and shown.
Drawdown can be measured on closed trades, at end of day, or on open equity, and the numbers differ. Ask which one you are being shown, and ask for the biggest.
4 · Commissions: are they in the results shown?
Ask whether commissions are included, and at what rate. Every contract pays a fee on the way in and on the way out. A result without commissions shows a higher profit and a shallower drawdown than anyone could have had; it is not the real number, only the better-looking one.
5 · How the losses could be worse than the past.
The worst drawdown on record is not the worst that can happen. Ask for a Monte Carlo simulation: the same trades reshuffled thousands of times, to show how deep the drawdown could have run in a different order, and ask which figure the vendor plans around.
6 · The right account size for the strategy.
Ask what account size the strategy needs to survive its own worst drawdown, and what happens to it on a 50K evaluation with a 2,000 dollar trailing drawdown. Anyone who has read their own numbers can answer in one sentence. "That would be financial advice" is a different sentence: it means the answer is a blown account.
7 · Results and a backtest you can reproduce yourself.
Ask whether you can run the backtest on your own machine and get the same numbers the vendor shows, and ask for the steps. A result that only exists on the vendor's screen cannot be checked.
8 · How many trades, over how long, and why it starts there.
Sample size is two numbers, not one: how many trades, and over how much time, and they only mean something together. A hundred trades in one month tells you about that month and nothing about the years; a strategy that trades at most twice a day needs years to reach a real count. Ask for both numbers, and ask why the record starts where it starts and ends where it ends. A record that ends wherever the curve looks best is not a record.
9 · What the strategy has done since the backtest.
Ask what the strategy has done since the record ended, and where you can see it. A record that stops at the backtest tells you nothing about now.
10 · Try it, or see it running, before you pay.
Ask whether you can run the strategy on a simulation account, or run its backtest, before any money changes hands. A vendor who will not let you see it work first is asking for trust in place of evidence.
If you are looking at buying a strategy or a service, ask these questions before you pay anyone. You are not being difficult; you are asking for the file every one of them already has, or should have, if they are a serious company.
Three answers tell you everything. "Here is the CSV" is the good one. "Results may vary, but our members are very happy" is the usual one. No reply at all is the honest one.
Then run the same list on us. Every link above goes to the page where the answer lives.
The list only works if we hold ourselves to it, so here is where we do not fully pass yet.
Slippage. Our published numbers include commissions and do not count slippage: the difference between the price a signal fires at and the price the order actually fills at. A backtest can only add slippage as a fixed amount per trade, and real slippage is never fixed; it changes from day to day with what is happening in the market. We say the same on the performance page, under Slippage.
We do not publish account statements. What we publish is the record you can check without trusting us: every trade posted as it happens on Discord and Telegram, a backtest you can reproduce on your own machine, and the strategy itself, free to download and run, on a simulation account if you want to watch it at no cost and no financial risk. None of it asks you to take our word for anything.
Backtested results are hypothetical. Past performance does not predict future results. Trading futures involves substantial risk of loss. Not investment advice.