A free reference document: how to read an MT5 Strategy Tester report like an auditor.

A backtest report is a claim, not evidence — it prints the result and hides the choices that produced it. This 14-page reference gives you the method to interrogate it yourself:

• Five questions to ask of any report — out-of-sample evidence, tick data quality, profit concentration, equity-curve structure, and reordering (Monte Carlo)
• The four structural fingerprints that separate a robust strategy from curve-fit marketing: grid recovery, time clustering, identical trade sequences, lot-size progression
• A 16-item checklist you can apply by hand to any report — printable, no tool required
• A field map of the report: where each number lives, from modelling quality to the deals table
• A prop-firm rule replay: profit target, daily loss, overall loss, minimum trading days — and why a balance-only pass is not a pass

Written by Quantsmith, maker of VerifyEA — the offline audit tool for MT5 reports. v1.0, CC BY 4.0: share it freely.

This document predicts nothing. It teaches you where to look, and what a red flag looks like before money is committed.