Trade Replay: Learning from Every Position, Bar by Bar

After a trade closes, you usually see the outcome, win or loss, P&L, hold time. What you don't automatically see is the full story: what the price did between entry and exit, how close it came to the stop or take profit levels, and whether the bot's exit decision came at a reasonable point or left something on the table.

Trade Replay fills that gap. It walks you through a closed trade's complete lifecycle, bar by bar, showing exactly what happened between the time your bot entered and the time it exited. This guide covers how to access it, what to look for, and how to use it as a practical learning tool.

What trade replay shows

For any closed trade, Trade Replay reconstructs:

• Entry point — the exact price and conditions when the bot opened the position
• Price action — how the underlying moved during the hold period, bar by bar
• Key decision points — moments where stop loss or take profit levels were approached or triggered
• Exit point — when and how the bot exited, and at what price
• Full timeline — the complete sequence from entry to exit with timestamps

The animated bar-by-bar format lets you watch the trade unfold in sequence rather than seeing a static start-and-end view. This is particularly useful for understanding trades where the outcome was different from what you expected.

Finding a trade to replay

From the capability grid: Click "Trade Replay" from the full Relay capability menu.

Through conversation:

"Replay my last trade on QQQ UT." "Show me a replay of the SPY trade from March 10th." "Replay the trade that hit stop loss yesterday on my QQQ bot." "Replay the longest trade from this week."

You can identify trades by recency, by outcome, by symbol, by date, or by any other characteristic. If you have a specific trade in mind, one you saw in the trade history that you want to understand better, describe it and Relay will locate it.

From the trade history view: If you're already looking at a specific trade in the Trade History section, you can ask Relay to replay it directly from context:

"Replay this trade."

Reading the replay

As the replay runs, pay attention to a few key moments:

Entry conditions What was the price doing when the bot entered? Was it at a moment of momentum, or did the bot enter into chop? Understanding the entry context helps you evaluate whether the signal that triggered entry was well-timed.

How the position moved initially Did the position move in your bot's favor immediately after entry, or did it initially move against the position before recovering? Initial adverse movement is normal in many strategies, but if it consistently triggers near your stop level before recovering, that's relevant information for your stop placement.

Stop loss and TP proximity How close did the price come to each level? A trade that closed at TP1 but came within a few percent of the stop loss tells a different story than one that moved cleanly in your direction from entry. The replay makes these near-misses visible.

Exit timing When and why did the bot exit? For take profit exits, you can see how much further the position moved after exit, context for evaluating whether your TP levels are capturing a reasonable portion of the move. For stop loss exits, you can see whether the price recovered after the stop fired.

Hold duration in context Seeing the hold duration laid against the actual price movement gives you intuition for whether the average hold time is well-calibrated for how the positions are moving.

Using replay for specific learning goals

When a stop loss fires unexpectedly: Replay the trade to see whether the stop was hit by a genuine adverse move or by a brief spike that quickly reversed. Repeated stop-outs that recover suggest the stop may be too tight for the symbol's typical volatility. Carry the insight into What-If Simulation to model whether a wider stop would have changed the outcome.

When a trade wins but feels like it left money on the table: Replay it and watch what the position did after your bot exited. If the move continued significantly after TP2 triggered, that's a signal that higher TP levels or partial-exit adjustments might be worth modeling.

When a trade loses but seems like it should have worked: Replay to see the full sequence. Was the signal that triggered entry followed by a sharp reversal? Was the stop hit by normal noise or by a significant directional move? The replay gives you the context to distinguish between a configuration issue and an unfavorable market condition.

When you're reviewing a bot's longest or shortest holds: Outlier hold times often tell you something about the conditions under which a bot exits. Replaying the longest holds can reveal situations where the position was held through an extended drawdown before recovering. Replaying the shortest holds shows you the fastest signal-to-exit sequences.

Combining replay with other Relay modes

Trade Replay works well as part of a broader analysis workflow:

After Weekly Review: Use the weekly summary to identify which trades or periods deserve closer examination, then replay those specific trades for detail.

Before What-If Simulation: Replay a set of stop-loss-triggered trades before running a simulation on a wider stop. The replay context helps you understand whether the simulation result makes sense.

With Trade Analysis: If Relay's pattern analysis flags that certain trade types are underperforming, replay examples of those trades to understand the execution-level detail behind the pattern.

A note on learning vs judging

Trade Replay is a learning tool, not a scorecard. The goal isn't to evaluate whether each individual trade was "good" or "bad" based on what the price did after exit, it's to identify consistent patterns across multiple replays that point toward configuration improvements.

One trade that stopped out and recovered is noise. Ten trades that stopped out and recovered, all within a narrow price band, is a signal. Use replay to look for patterns, not to second-guess individual outcomes.