StratevaThe process
Four steps to a decision, and everything underneath them.
A validation is only worth something if its rules were set before anyone knew the answer. Here are the four steps you buy, the twenty they contain, and the seven contractual stages they run on.
How a validation works
Four steps, from the material you already have to a decision you can act on.
Define
Send code, Pine Script, a trade list or written rules. Strateva turns the material into an exact scope, and you confirm it.
Execute
We freeze the rules, the data, the costs and the benchmark. The strategy runs in an isolated environment.
Verify
The engine reproduces the metrics and examines robustness, time dependence, costs, benchmark and alternative paths.
Decide
You receive the evidence, the limitations, and a result that tells you what the next step is.
Every validation ends in one of three results
- Ready for shadowing
- Revision required
- Insufficient evidence
AI can interpret and prepare. The metrics and the verdict are produced by a deterministic engine.
The twenty steps, in full
The four steps above are what a validation is. These twenty are what it does. They are published so the result can be argued with, not because you need to read them before buying.
Material received
Your code, Pine Script, trade list or written rules arrive as they are. Nothing has to be tidied first: the state it comes in is what tells us how much reconstruction the work needs.
Assisted interpretation
Rules written in prose are read and turned into a draft specification. This is the one step where a model is involved, and it produces a proposal, never a number.
Validation Scope drafted
The claim under test, the asset, the timeframe, the period, the costs and the benchmark are written down as one exact document.
You confirm it
Nothing runs until you agree that the specification is your strategy. This is the last moment at which any of it can be chosen.
Data prepared and frozen
The series is assembled, checked and fixed. From here the inputs cannot move, which is what makes the answer repeatable.
Strategy normalised
The strategy is expressed in a form the engine can execute without altering what it does.
Runner reviewed
What will actually execute is read before it executes. Generated or adapted code is never run unreviewed.
Isolated execution
The run happens in a clean environment with no access to anything outside the frozen inputs, so what is measured is the strategy and not its surroundings.
Strategy Trace produced
A record of what the strategy did, decision by decision, rather than only what it returned.
Strategy Trace verified
The trace is checked against the specification: the positions taken are the positions the agreed rules imply.
Quantitative kernel
The metrics are recomputed from the run and reconciled against what was declared before it.
Classic Monte Carlo
Alternative plausible paths, to read drawdown and time under water as ranges rather than as the one history that happened.
Permuted Monte Carlo
The same returns in a different order, to separate an edge from a fortunate sequence.
Evidence versioned
Every figure is stored with what produced it, so a number can be traced rather than trusted.
Independent verification
The evidence is checked against the criteria by a path that does not reuse the code that produced it.
Criteria evaluated
The frozen decision rule is applied. The criteria were fixed before execution, so the result is not chosen once the answer is visible.
Technical result
The internal outcome, in the engine’s own vocabulary and at its own level of detail.
Public projection
That result is projected into the published contract: four categories, one status, one reason, one next step.
Human review
A person reads the coherence between evidence, categories and conclusion, and whether the limitations are specific enough to act on.
Final delivery
The report, its annex and the result reach you together, with the scope they are valid inside.
Steps are described in public terms. Thresholds, internal identifiers, commands and infrastructure stay where they belong. Several of these steps involve a person reading something; none of them is fully automatic, and the page does not claim otherwise.
How it is done
Three things almost nobody does, and they are the difference between an opinion and a check.
Bias scanner
Reads your code looking for the future where it should not be.
An analyser walks the structure of your code, not its text. That matters: the patterns by which the future leaks into the past are almost never written the same way twice, and a text search misses them. It is built assuming nobody writes them obviously — it resolves aliases, computed expressions, and variants that read differently but do the same thing.
It is a filter, not a certificate. A clean result lowers the risk; it does not prove there is no bias.
Nested walk-forward
Parameters are chosen without ever seeing the data they are judged on.
Two loops. The inner one tries configurations on data that has already passed; the outer one evaluates the winner on data that loop never saw. Between them sits a purged gap the size of the label horizon, so no training label resolves inside the evaluated period.
Verified by exhaustive perturbation: altering any future data point changes no earlier decision at all.
Sealed prospective holdout
The criterion is frozen before the first observation exists.
The exact calendar, the benchmark, the cost model and the decision rule are fixed and hash-sealed before anything starts. Each observation is appended to a signed, hash-chained ledger, in order, with no way to edit what came before. The verdict is computed against that frozen rule, never one picked afterwards.
It is the only test that admits no reinterpretation after the fact. It is also the slowest: time has to actually pass.
Plausible alternative paths
We generate possible alternative paths while keeping part of the time dependence observed in the original series. That makes it possible to estimate how drawdown, time under water, losing streaks and risk of ruin could vary, instead of reading one historical path as if it were the only one available.
How the resampling works
The resampling preserves local structure rather than shuffling observations independently, because independent shuffling destroys exactly the clustering that makes drawdowns deep.
The same result, in a different order
We keep the observed returns exactly as they are and change the order in which they arrive. That shows how much of the risk depended on history having happened in a particularly favourable sequence.
The historical return can stay the same while the experience of risk changes completely.
What this does and does not measure
Permuting the same returns without replacement leaves the terminal result unchanged — the total return is identical in every permutation, by construction. So this is not a distribution of final profit, and it is not presented as one. What it measures is everything that depends on the order:
- Maximum drawdown
- Drawdown duration
- Time under water
- Longest losing streak
- Risk of ruin
How the verdict is built
The result is derived from structured evidence and deterministic rules fixed before execution. It is not a tally of passes: each pillar carries its own conclusion and its own evidence, and the report says which one decided the result. A strategy can clear every statistical check and still fail on economics, and averaging those into one score would hide precisely the thing worth knowing.
Shadowing is not authorisation to trade real capital, and no result guarantees future profitability.
Every engagement ends in one of four outcomes
- Ready for shadowing
- Revision required
- Insufficient evidence
- Review pending
- Ready for shadowing: no reason was found to discard the strategy once the benchmark, the costs and its stability over time had been checked. It means “run it in parallel, unfunded, first”. It is never authorisation to go to production or to trade real capital.
- That outcome can still carry limitations. They are accepted only if they are specific, written into the report, and do not prevent the parallel-running phase.
- Revision required: the strategy did not pass one of the mandatory checks. The report says which one, what it measured, and what would have to change.
- Insufficient evidence: nothing clearly failed, but the material does not support a conclusion. That is not the same result as the one above, and you are always told which of the two you got.
- While the evidence review is still open the engagement sits at review pending, and nothing is published as an outcome. Whether the strategy is ready for production is a separate question, reported separately, and it does not change the outcome.
When a strategy does not come through there are two different reasons, and you are always told which one you got: a specific check failed, or the available evidence could not settle the question. “Revision required” and “insufficient evidence” are not the same result, and reporting them as if they were is how a validation stops being useful.
What AI does, and what it does not
What it does
- Interprets rules written in prose and turns them into a draft specification.
- Prepares the material so the engine can run it.
What it never does
- You confirm the interpretation before anything runs.
- AI does not compute the metrics.
- AI does not compute the verdict.
- AI cannot change the rules once the results are visible.
The metrics and the result come from a deterministic engine. That separation is the reason the verdict means anything.
What a person reviews
Before anything is delivered, a person reads the evidence behind every check, the coherence between the pillars and the conclusion, whether the limitations are specific enough to act on, and whether the report answers the question that was actually asked.
The seven stages
The order is fixed. No stage is skipped, and once the inputs are frozen no earlier stage can be reopened without starting again.
Submit your strategy
You
You describe what the strategy does and send whatever you have: a return series, a notebook, a repository, or the rules written out. Nothing has to be tidy yet — what it is in is what tells us how much reconstruction the work needs.
Produces: your material recorded as submitted
Confirm the scope
Together
We agree in writing on the claim being tested, the benchmark it is tested against, the period, the cost assumptions and what would count as a failure. This is the last moment at which any of it can be chosen.
Produces: a Validation Scope you have confirmed
Freeze the inputs
Strateva
The agreed material, the data and the decision rule are fixed and fingerprinted. From here on, the question is settled and only the answer is unknown.
Produces: rules, data, costs and benchmark fixed and fingerprinted
Run in isolation
Strateva
The strategy runs in a clean, isolated environment with no access to anything outside the frozen inputs, so what is measured is the strategy and not its surroundings.
Produces: a completed run in an isolated environment
Validate quantitatively
Strateva
The results are put through the checks agreed at scoping: the causal structure, the statistical evidence, the economics after costs, and the stability of all of it under stress.
Produces: the measured evidence behind every check
Review the evidence
Strateva
Every check is read by hand against the evidence behind it. A number that cannot be traced back to how it was produced does not make it into the report.
Produces: that evidence read and reconciled by a person
Receive verdict and report
Strateva
You receive one outcome, the reason for it, what would have to change, and the evidence it rests on. The outcome is computed against the rule frozen at stage three, never one chosen once the result was visible.
Produces: the report and the result
Who does what
What you provide
- The strategy itself, in whatever form it exists: returns, code, a notebook or the written rules.
- What you believe it does, and what result you expect it to hold up to.
- The data, or enough about it that an equivalent set can be assembled.
- Anything already known to be wrong with it. Declared limitations cost nothing; discovered ones cost a tier.
What you confirm before anything runs
- The exact claim under test, written in one sentence.
- The benchmark it will be compared against, and why that one is the fair comparison.
- The period, the universe and the cost assumptions.
- What would count as a failure — agreed while the answer is still unknown.
- The scope and the price. Neither changes afterwards without your approval.
What Strateva does
- Freezes and fingerprints the inputs, so the question cannot drift towards the answer.
- Reproduces the result in an isolated environment, without quietly altering the original claim.
- Challenges it on all four pillars, not only the one that looks weakest.
- Reads the evidence behind every number by hand before it is published.
- States the outcome against the frozen rule, and says which of the four it is.
What you receive
- One outcome, in plain language, with the reason it landed there.
- The four pillars, each argued separately, so a weakness is located rather than averaged away.
- The limitations and the risks that were not resolved.
- The conditions under which the result would be worth revalidating.
- The evidence annex the figures come from.
Why the inputs are frozen
Almost every backtest that fails in production failed the same way: the rule was adjusted, in good faith, after the result was visible. A threshold moved, a period was trimmed, a benchmark was swapped for a kinder one. Each change is defensible on its own, and together they guarantee a good-looking answer.
Freezing the inputs makes that impossible rather than discouraged. The claim, the data, the costs and the decision rule are fixed and fingerprinted before execution, so the outcome is computed against a rule that existed before anyone knew what it would say.
It is also what makes the result repeatable. Anyone holding the same frozen inputs gets the same answer, which is the difference between a validation and an opinion.
What a validation does not do
- It does not predict future profitability. It reports what held up under the checks that were agreed, over the period that was examined, and nothing beyond that.
- It is not investment advice and never a recommendation to allocate capital.
- “Ready for shadowing” is not authorisation to trade real money. It means the strategy may be run unfunded, in parallel, so its live behaviour can be observed.
- A clean result lowers risk; it does not prove the absence of a flaw. No finite set of checks can.
- Whether a strategy is ready for production is a separate question, reported separately, and it does not change the outcome.
Have something that needs an independent check?
Describe the strategy, the backtest or the model. The scope and the price are confirmed with you before any work starts.
Nothing runs, and nothing is charged, before you approve the scope.
The information you submit will be used to assess your request. Read the privacy policy.