Execution assumptions
Does the result survive fills that are less convenient than the model assumed?
Add explicit friction per trade and watch the evidence degrade. If modest costs erase the result, execution is doing more work than the strategy story admits.
THE PRESSURE TEST
Move the convenient assumptions.
Verify applies stepped additional costs to the closed-trade record. This is a sensitivity test, not a reconstruction of the order book or the broker's exact fill process.
- State commissions and fees instead of leaving them implicit.
- Test several slippage levels rather than one preferred estimate.
- Calculate the additional per-trade cost that reaches breakeven.
- Separate a robust result from one that disappears at the spread.
Two systems can show the same net curve while carrying very different execution risk. A low-turnover system may barely move under added friction; a high-turnover system can cross breakeven after a small cost increase. The same headline says nothing about that sensitivity.
The check stops here.
A trade list cannot prove queue position, available size, partial fills, latency, market impact, or whether the original simulator used information unavailable at the decision time.
SEE THE CALCULATION, NOT A CLAIM