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How Many Trades Do You Need to Test a Trading Strategy?

You need at least 100 trades across multiple market conditions to meaningfully evaluate a trading strategy. Fewer trades produce results that are too heavily influenced by randomness to draw reliable conclusions.

100 trades is a practical starting point, not a magic number. A stronger evaluation includes enough trades to reduce the influence of any single outcome, and enough time to cover different market environments — trending, sideways, and volatile conditions.

Rather than asking whether your last 100 trades were profitable, compare rolling samples — trades 1 to 50, 51 to 100, 101 to 150. If profitability only exists in one small segment, that is important information about the robustness of the strategy.

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