Creating and running strategies

When to use this guide

Use this guide when you are ready to turn your trading ideas into live or backtestable strategies.

By the end, you will be able to:

• Create a new strategy.
• Add and manage strategy revisions.
• Understand how revisions capture changes to your strategy.
• Start and stop strategies safely.

Key concepts

• A strategy is the top-level object for a trading idea (“SOL basis trade”, “ETH trend follower”).
• A strategy revision is a specific, immutable version of that strategy:
  • It contains the strategy’s logic, settings, and any revision-specific metadata.
  • You can backtest and run a specific revision.
• A strategy can have many revisions over time.
• At any moment, zero or one revision is actively running for a given strategy.

You can change your strategy only by creating new revisions, never by editing a revision in place.

Prerequisites

• You are signed in.
• To run live, you will also need one or more confirmed trading accounts (you can still define strategies before connecting accounts).

Step 1: Create a new strategy

1. Go to the Strategies section of the app.
2. Click Create strategy (or similar).
3. Fill in:
   • Name – a clear, human‑readable label.
   • Description – what the strategy does, its goals, and any assumptions.
   • Tags – optional labels for organizing strategies (for example, basis, trend, experimental).
4. Confirm to create the strategy.

You now have a strategy with:

• A system‑generated ID (used internally).
• Status typically set to Active.
• No revisions yet.

The strategy will appear in your main strategy list, but it cannot run until it has at least one revision.

Step 2: Configure the first revision

From the newly created strategy:

1. Open the strategy detail page.
2. Click New revision or Create revision.
3. In the revision editor, you will typically:
   • Update the strategy logic and settings for this revision.
   • Select markets or instruments the strategy should trade.
   • Define how the strategy should behave, for example:
     • Data inputs and indicators.
     • Signal generation and risk rules.
     • Order execution and position sizing.
   • Set revision-specific values such as thresholds, windows, and limits.
4. Add a short revision description summarizing what changed (for example, “Increase take‑profit from 2% to 3%”).
5. Save the revision.

This creates a strategy revision linked to your strategy with:

• A version identifier (for example, v1, 2024‑05‑01).
• Status set to stopped (not yet running).

The strategy’s metadata updates to show this as its latest revision.

Step 3: Iterate with additional revisions

As you refine your idea:

1. Open the strategy.
2. View the list of revisions.
3. For each new idea:
   • Create a new revision.
   • Update the logic or settings for that revision.
4. Give each revision a meaningful version name and description.

Over time, you build a clear history of how your strategy evolved. Each revision remains immutable, so you can always:

• Repeat a backtest on exactly the same logic.
• Understand which version was live during a given period.

Step 4: Start a strategy

To run a strategy live:

1. Ensure that:
   • At least one trading account is connected and confirmed.
   • That account is assigned to this strategy (see the trading accounts guide).
2. From the strategy detail page:
   • Choose which revision to run (or accept the suggested latest).
   • Click Start strategy.
3. Confirm any summary the app presents:
   • Which revision will run.
   • Which trading accounts it will use.
   • Any risk‑level warnings.

What happens behind the scenes

From your perspective, you see a status change:

• stopped → baking → running, or possibly to error/liquidating in edge cases.

Conceptually:

• Structure builds and deploys your chosen revision as a dedicated backend service.
• It wires that service up to the appropriate venues and accounts.
• Once healthy, it marks the revision as running.

You don’t need to manage servers, deployments, or workflows directly—only the strategy and its revisions.

Step 5: Monitor and stop a running strategy

On the Strategies overview page you can see, for each strategy:

• Current status:
  • running – actively trading.
  • baking – being prepared; not yet live.
  • stopped – idle.
  • stopping – shutting down cleanly.
  • liquidating – closing positions urgently due to poor account health.
• The currently running revision.
• Linked trading accounts.

From a strategy’s detail page you can:

• Stop the currently running revision:
  1. Click Stop strategy.
  2. Confirm you understand it will stop issuing new orders.
  3. The status transitions running → stopping → stopped when complete.
• Review:
  • Recent activity and logs (depending on UI).
  • Linked holdings and positions across accounts.

Stopping a strategy does not automatically close open positions unless your configuration explicitly does so. You can wire liquidation or flattening behavior into your strategy logic, or manage closing positions manually at the venue level.

Next steps

• If you have not yet connected trading accounts, continue to Connecting trading accounts.
• To test a new revision before going live, see Backtesting strategies.