FNOTrader Algo — Help

A no-code builder for F&O algos. Author multi-leg strategies, backtest them against minute-bar history, and ship the exact same recipe to live trading through your broker. This page documents every feature in the builder, the backtest engine, and the live runtime — with worked examples for each.

Welcome

The execution engine is a standalone Go service that runs configurable multi-leg F&O strategies on your behalf. It pairs three pieces:

• A visual builder (this UI) where you describe a strategy as a recipe — no programming required.
• A backtest engine that replays the recipe against last year of minute-bar history (CE/PE OHLC + IV + OI per ATM±10 strike).
• A live runtime that ships the exact same recipe to your broker — Kite/Dhan/paper — and supervises the trade end-to-end.

Trader's mental model

Five-minute quick-start

1. Open the builder and pick a Template in Step 1 — e.g. Short Straddle. It seeds the legs for you.
2. Skip straight to Step 6 → press ▶ Run Backtest. You'll get a full report in 10–20 seconds covering the last month.
3. Tweak the SL/TG in Step 4 → re-run. Compare results in the Backtest History tab.
4. Press 💾 Save Strategy. The recipe is now reusable in live trading too.
5. From the home screen, attach the saved strategy to a Broker Account and press ▶ Start.

Colors & conventions

Badges: BACKTEST works in backtest, LIVE works in live trading, BETA accepted but not fully wired, TODO deferred.

Step 1 · Strategy identity

Three fields define what the strategy is and where it trades.

Step 2 · Instruments to Watch

The "vocabulary" your conditions can use. Anything you name here is readable in Step 3 conditions via ALIAS.METRIC.

Scope dropdown

Per-row fields

• Alias — what you'll type in Step-3 expressions. Auto-populates from Scope but is fully editable. Keep it descriptive (OPT_ATM_CE not foo).
• Timeframe — bucket size for indicator aggregation (1m / 3m / 5m / 15m / 30m / 1h / 1d). Drives EMA, RSI etc. on that alias. A 5m TF means OPT_ATM_CE.EMA(10) reads the 10-bar EMA of 5-min candles, not 10 raw minutes.
• Symbol / Expiry / Strike Distance — adapt to the chosen scope.

OPT_ATM_CE.CLOSE > OPT_ATM_CE.EMA(10)

Step 3A · Entry conditions

Multi-row builder. Each row is one boolean clause; rows combine with AND or OR (your choice). The full expression is evaluated every bar (or throttled — see Check Frequency) and the strategy enters on the first true.

Per-row fields

Operator catalog

Combine mode

Toggle AND (all rows must fire) or OR (any one). Rows cannot mix AND/OR within one block — for that, save two strategies and cascade them via On-Hit actions.

Check Frequency

How often the expression is evaluated:

• tick — every market tick (live) / every minute-bar (backtest).
• every X-min bar close — only when minute-of-day mod X == 0 (e.g. 5 = 09:20, 09:25, …).

Step 3B · Exit conditions

Same builder as 3A but evaluated after entry. If any exit row fires (when combine = OR) or all exit rows fire (combine = AND), the engine flattens every open leg at next bar's open.

Exit conditions compose with the per-leg SL/TG (Step 4) and Combined SL/TG (Step 5). Whichever triggers first wins — they're not mutually exclusive.

Step 3C · BTST / STBT mode

Buy-Today-Sell-Tomorrow / Sell-Today-Buy-Tomorrow. Two time pickers: Start Time (today's entry window) and Exit Time (next trading day's square-off). When both are set, the engine flips overnight_hold = true and the strategy is held across the EOD square-off boundary. Entry/Exit conditions 3A/3B remain available but optional.

Step 4 · Strategy Legs

Table of legs the strategy fires. One row per leg.

Main-row columns

Strike Selection modes

Advanced (⚙) — tabbed panel

Tab 1 · Wait & Trade

Delay this leg's entry until its premium crosses a trigger price. Useful for buying weakness or selling strength after the basket has already fired.

• SL Wait (sec) — extra delay before arming SL after fill.
• Wait & Trade Trigger — value + unit (pts absolute / pts_rel relative to LTP at entry / %).

Tab 2 · Stoploss (SL1+)

Per-rung fields: SL Qty (% or lots), On-Hit action, Check Frequency. Add SL2 / SL3 rungs for laddered exits.

On-Hit action catalog

Tab 3 · Target (TGT1+)

Same structure as SL. Target Types include all SL types plus r_multiple (risk-reward — target distance = N × stop distance).

Tab 4 · Per-leg Trailing

• Trail Trigger — profit ₹ threshold that arms the trail.
• Trail Step — every N₹ further profit, ratchet the stop up.
• Trail Lock — minimum ₹ locked in once trail is armed.
• Check Frequency — tick / xm_close.

Step 5 · Strategy Risk Settings (Combined)

Same shape as the per-leg advanced panel but at the basket level. Four tabs: Wait & Trade, Stoploss, Target, Trailing.

Combined SL/TG fires when the basket-level MTM (sum of all open-leg PnLs) crosses a ₹ or % threshold. On hit, the action choices include:

• just exit — flatten all legs.
• close_current_strategy — explicit version of above.
• close_and_re_enter_strategy — flatten, then re-fire after a configured delay (capped by NTimes).
• close_all_losing / close_all_profitable — partial flatten.
• close_all_ce_buys / _ce_sells / _pe_buys / _pe_sells — close by option-type + side.
• move_sl_to_cost_profitable_legs — lock breakeven on the winners.
• execute_other_leg / execute_other_strategy — cascade.

Step 6 · Execution Settings

Step 7 · Summary & Save

A single-page English-prose recap of everything you've configured. Refresh it (↻) any time. Then ▶ Start Strategy (live), 💾 Save Strategy (reusable recipe), or Export JSON / Import JSON (share/version).

Expression language

Conditions internally compile to a small expression language. The builder writes it for you, but you can also type it directly into the Preview box (advanced).

Operators & precedence

Symbol resolution

Three styles, all interchangeable:

• NIFTY.CLOSE — bare underlying token. Recognised symbols: NIFTY, BANKNIFTY, FINNIFTY, MIDCPNIFTY, SENSEX, BANKEX.
• ATM_CE.IV, OTM2_PE.OI, ITM3_CE.DELTA — relative option symbols. Strike-offset computed automatically; CE/PE explicit.
• LEG1.CLOSE, LEG2.IV — refers to leg #1, #2, … of this strategy.
• ALIAS.METRIC — any alias you defined in Step 2.

Special identifiers

Multi-instrument (Phase 4.6)

// NIFTY straddle, only when SENSEX is trending up
TIME >= 0920 AND SENSEX.CLOSE > SENSEX.EMA(10)

Arithmetic between metrics

The evaluator supports full arithmetic between metric reads. Strike-wise PCR is the canonical example:

// Strike-wise PCR > 1.5 (puts dominate at ATM = bearish hedging)
ATM_PE.OI / ATM_CE.OI > 1.5

// Straddle premium relative to spot > 1.5%
(ATM_CE.LTP + ATM_PE.LTP) / NIFTY.CLOSE * 100 > 1.5

// Credit-spread net premium > ₹50
LEG1.LTP - LEG2.LTP > 50

Every condition row in Steps 3A/3B has an optional arithmetic combinator between the primary metric and the operator — a small dropdown reading — by default. Pick +, −, ×, or ÷ and a second [Symbol] + [Metric] + [args] block appears, so you can build composite LHS expressions like ATM_PE.OI ÷ ATM_CE.OI > 1.5 entirely from dropdowns. The Preview textarea is still available for power users who want to type longer compound expressions directly.

Metrics & indicator catalog

Every metric below works on any symbol — spot, option, alias.

Price & structural

Momentum

Volatility & channels

Volume / OI / CDV

Option Greeks

Computed via Black-Scholes (Hull 11e) at risk-free rate 6.5%. Returned per option symbol; backtest computes on-the-fly from (spot, strike, IV, DTE).

Pivots, CPR, Camarilla

TIME & PREV_CLOSE

// Window-only entry
TIME >= 0925 AND TIME < 1100

// Gap-up open
NIFTY.OPEN > PREV_CLOSE * 1.005

Backtest engine

Replays your saved strategy against minute-bar history from dhan_backtest.db (29.4M option rows, spot bars per index, ATM±10 strike coverage with full OHLC + IV + OI). Hit ▶ Run Backtest on any saved strategy; reports are persisted to Backtest History.

What's loaded

• Spot bars for the primary underlying (NIFTY / SENSEX) + every foreign underlying referenced in expressions (Phase 4.6).
• Option bars (CE/PE OHLC + IV + OI) for the strike offsets the strategy needs — folded from per-leg Distance + any ATM_CE/OTM2_PE tokens in the entry/exit expressions.
• day_meta (ATM, expiry flags, DTE) per session.

On-the-fly Greeks

The archive carries OHLC + IV + OI but not Δ Γ Θ Vega. The engine computes them per-minute from (spot, strike, IV, DTE) via Black-Scholes. Theta ticks down throughout the day as DTE shrinks. Verified by 7 unit tests including ATM sanity, deep ITM/OTM bounds, Γ-peak-at-ATM, vega-peak-at-ATM, garbage-input guards, and put-call parity at 1e-9 precision.

Multi-instrument

Expression tokens like SENSEX.RSI(14) in a NIFTY backtest transparently load SENSEX spot bars in lock-step. Unsupported foreign underlyings (BANKNIFTY, FINNIFTY, MIDCPNIFTY, BANKEX) surface a clear Warnings entry instead of silently zeroing — see multi-instrument.

No-lookahead-bias

Friction model

Two knobs in the Run-Backtest dialog:

• cost_inr_per_leg — flat ₹ deducted per round-trip (brokerage + STT + exchange + GST + stamp). Typical ₹50–80 for NIFTY.
• slippage_pct — adverse fill at entry and exit. SELL at mid×(1−slip%) on entry, mid×(1+slip%) on exit; BUY direction reverses. You pay both sides.

The report has 3 tabs: Plain, Costs only, +Slippage — so you can see the friction sensitivity instantly.

Check Frequency throttle

Honored independently per surface: entry expression, exit expression, per-leg SL1/SL2/TGT1/TGT2/Trail, and combined SL/TG/Trail. shouldCheckThisMinute() handles three modes:

• tick — every minute bar.
• every_xm — N-min interval from StartHHMM.
• xm_close — minute-of-day grid (MM mod N == 0).

Use this to model "evaluate SL only on 5-min close" or "Combined SL every minute, per-leg SL every 5 minutes" mixtures.

Strike clamp at ATM±10

The archive only has ATM±10 strike data. Out-of-range legs are clamped to the boundary (with a warning) — never silently skipped. Live trading uses the exact strike you specified.

You'll also see a clamp notification toast in the Builder when:

• You pick a Distance outside ATM±10 (OTM12, ITM15, etc.).
• You pick any dynamic mode (Premium / Delta / Absolute / Straddle / UndPrice) — since the resolved strike is unknown at build time.

Report & History

Every backtest produces:

• Daily P&L list with trade-by-trade detail, ATM, skip reasons.
• Headline stats — total PnL, win rate, day count, best/worst day, max drawdown, avg daily.
• Monthly calendar — hedge-fund-style P&L heat-map.
• Equity curve + running drawdown chart (TradingView Lightweight Charts).
• Strategy rules header — exact entry/exit/SL/TG echoed back.
• Warnings panel — strike clamps, unsupported metrics, missing data.

Every run is persisted to Backtest History — sort by PnL, win rate, sharpe.

Live trading · broker adapters

Strategy lifecycle

1. Start — registry spawns a supervised goroutine for the strategy.
2. Wait for entry — evaluates entry condition every tick (or per check_freq) until firing.
3. Resolve strikes — uses the per-leg strike-selection mode (Distance / Premium / Delta / OI-based / etc.).
4. Fire legs — atomically, per execution-mode (parallel / sequential / buy-first).
5. Monitor — quote feed per leg → per-leg SL/TG → combined SL/TG → trail SL — all gated by their own check_freq.
6. Exit — on SL/TG hit, exit-condition fire, sqoff time, or kill-switch.
7. Settle — records realised P&L, updates daily-loss counters, marks strategy complete.

Leg execution modes

• parallel — all legs fired concurrently (default).
• sequential — wait for leg N to fill before firing leg N+1.
• buy_first — all BUY legs in parallel; wait HoldSellSec; then all SELL legs. Locks hedges before opening short exposure.

Fail policies when any leg fails to fill:

• cancel_all — square off any filled legs and abort.
• keep_placed — proceed with the partial basket.
• retry_failed — retry up to MaxRetries before falling back to cancel_all.

On-Hit actions

Fire on SL or TGT events at the leg level (Step 4 → SL/TGT tabs) or the basket level (Step 5 → Combined SL/TGT). See the Step 4 action catalog for per-leg; basket-level actions are listed in Step 5. All actions can chain and most carry a delay parameter for staged behaviour.

Hedges & Move-SL-to-Cost

• IsHedge flag (checkbox on a leg) — that leg is excluded from Move-SL-to-Cost and is exited last when flatting the basket. Use on BUY legs that protect a SELL.
• Move-SL-to-Cost (Combined SL action) — once profitable legs cross a threshold, move every other (non-hedge) leg's SL to its entry price. Locks breakeven on the open legs.

Risk gate

Webhook entry (OnSignal)

Get a private token from the Webhook page. POST to /api/webhook/signal/{token} with no body — the token is the auth. The configured saved-strategy fires immediately. Useful for TradingView / Python alerts / external scanners.

curl -X POST https://your-engine/api/webhook/signal/AbC123xyz

Telegram notifications

Tick Send to Telegram in Step 6 to mirror every lifecycle event to your bot — entry fills, SL/TG hits, leg closes, re-entries, auto-hedge applied. Configure bot_token + chat_id in config.yml. Buffered, non-blocking, Markdown-formatted.

Strategy recipes

Twelve worked examples covering the breadth of features. Each is a complete spec you can paste into the builder.

Known limits

• Backtest strike range — ATM±10 only. Beyond that, legs clamp with a warning. Live trading unaffected.
• Backtest spot underlyings — only NIFTY and SENSEX have archived spot bars. BANKNIFTY / FINNIFTY / MIDCPNIFTY / BANKEX references warn and read 0.
• Multi-component synthetic instruments (custom combiners) are accepted by the live engine but the backtest currently skips them with a warning.
• Premium / Delta / Absolute / OI-based strike resolution is deferred in backtest — those modes resolve to the clamp boundary with a warning. Live trading resolves dynamically as designed.
• Gap-up / Gap-down gates, auto-hedge logic, re-execute-N-times are accepted in params but the live engine evaluation is partial — they're flagged BETA.
• Kite / Dhan adapters are scaffolded but not yet production-tested. Use paper or stub for go-live testing.

Glossary

FAQ

Why are my backtest trades different from yesterday's run?

Most likely you tweaked something in the Builder, or the engine received a lookahead-bias fix / Greeks fix / TF-fix in a recent release. If the recipe is unchanged and pre-dates a fix, results should diverge — the older results were quietly wrong.

My strategy never enters in backtest. Why?

Check the Warnings panel of the report. Common reasons:

• Foreign underlying referenced but unarchived (e.g. BANKNIFTY).
• Out-of-archive strike (Distance > ATM±10 or Premium/Delta/etc. resolving outside).
• Entry condition that depends on an indicator that hasn't warmed up yet — e.g. EMA(200) with only ~50 bars in history.

Why is my entry timing one bar later than my signal?

That's the lookahead-bias guard working as intended — see No-lookahead-bias. Pure-TIME entries don't defer; only indicator-driven entries do.

How do I compute strike-wise PCR?

Pick the primary metric (e.g. ATM_PE · OI), then choose ÷ from the arithmetic-combinator dropdown in the same row, then pick the second metric (ATM_CE · OI). Set the operator to greater than and the RHS value to 1.5. The Preview compiles to (ATM_PE.OI / ATM_CE.OI) > 1.5 and the backtest/live engine evaluates it natively — no special PCR metric needed because the same UI supports any ratio / sum / difference / product of two metrics.

What's the difference between "tick" and "xm_close" check freq?

tick evaluates every minute bar. xm_close only evaluates on bars whose minute-of-day mod X is zero — so 5m_close fires at 09:20, 09:25, 09:30, … and ignores the bars between. Use xm_close to model "candle-close confirmation" entry/exit logic.