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Backtesting & Statistics

What Is a Control Test

A control test runs the same test on a rule with the idea taken out, any hours, a coin toss or just holding, on the same bars with the same costs, so that a result is read as a gap from the control rather than from zero. This paper shows you the control in five lines; the idea as two identical capsules, medicine and sugar; all 276 pairs of hours on the same 135 real days of the euro in 2026, sorted, with the plain rule 68th from the top; the hold control, the any-hours control and the rule side by side; and how an optimisation over every hour on your platform is the control run for you.

Difficulty
Advanced
Reading time
5 min
Pages
8
Reviewed by
Saman Rahbar

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A control test in five lines

A control test is the same test run on a rule with the idea taken out, any hours, a coin toss, or simply holding. It matters because a result means nothing until you know what a result with no idea in it looks like on the same bars. The method is the same bars, the same dates and the same costs with the rule swapped for the empty one, and the result read as the gap from the control rather than from zero. Three controls fit the example rule. Holding the euro from the first bar of March 2026 to the last bar of the test lost 158.6 pips, where a pip is the fourth decimal place of the price. Any pair of buy-and-sell hours, all 276 of them, made a median of 27. The plain 10:00 to 18:00 rule made 150.3, which beat both, and which also sits 68th of the 276.

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