# What do Test honestly and the hold-out tell me?

Strategies & bots · Where: Strategy › Results › Test honestly · Updated 2026-10-20

Costs lists what every number already includes: fees on entry and exit, slippage on every fill, and funding for each bar a perp trade stays open. Hold-out cuts the run by time, the first seventy percent of trades against the rest, and says whether the later part still made money. Your tries counts the backtests you ran this session.

## Step by step

1. **Costs** Nothing to switch on. A result that only works before costs is not an edge, so the tester never shows one.
2. **Hold-out** Two rows, the earlier trades and the later ones, each with its average R, win rate and money. Read the verdict under them.
3. **Its limit** This is one run cut in two, and the rules were chosen looking at all of it. A true walk-forward retunes on each stretch; the tester does not do that yet.
4. **Your tries** Every backtest started from the builder, newest first: name, market, target, stop, trades, average R, deepest dip.
5. **The count** The best of many tries always looks better than it is. The more variants you ran, the less the winner means on its own.
6. **Neighbours** Nudge the target, the stop and the lookbacks. A real edge still makes money nearby; a lucky one works at exactly one setting.

Web page: https://buildtrade.app/help/test-honestly-hold-out/