5 Reasons Your Strategy Looks Profitable But Isn't

Your strategy already knows the future — and you don't know it knows. This is the single most common source of inflated TradingView backtest results.

Even a bias-free strategy can show fake profits if orders fill at prices that never existed. One bad setting turns +$5,046 into −$883.

Testing 24/7 hides the fact that your strategy only works during 4 hours a day. A losing overall strategy can have a genuine edge — in the right session.

A 94% win rate over 3 years of data is almost always a red flag, not a feature. Over-optimizing parameters memorizes the past instead of modeling the market.

Profit factor, win rate, drawdown — most traders misread these numbers. Here's what they actually mean and how to use them to make a real trading decision.