What this helps you do

This FAQ answers common questions about how Pre-Built Strategies behave, how to use them with alerts, and what to expect from performance and results over time. It matters because understanding these details helps you avoid confusion, set realistic expectations, and build a strategy workflow that actually fits your trading style.

Strategy design and behavior

Do all strategies follow the PayDay Cycle framework?

No. Not all strategies on Wallstreet.io are based on the PayDay Cycle framework.

The PayDay Cycle model often uses a combination of bullish Heikin-Ashi candles and a positive MACD crossover as part of its entry logic, but Pre-Built Strategies are not limited to that template. Inside Strategy Builder, you can create strategies with many different studies and conditions, including but not limited to Heikin-Ashi and MACD.

Because of that, strategies may “start” for very different reasons. One strategy might trigger on a moving average crossover, another on RSI levels, another on a custom combination of indicators defined by the trader who built the backtest. If you want to see how any specific strategy works, you can always open it in Strategy Builder and review its entry and exit rules.

Can I use one strategy on a different stock?

Yes, you can apply the same strategy logic to a different stock.

Load the strategy inside Strategy Builder, then change symbols using your watchlist or the symbol search. Each time you switch symbols, the Builder keeps the rules the same and applies them to the new stock. This lets you see how that exact rule set would have behaved on different symbols.

Just keep in mind that changing the symbol effectively creates a different idea. Even though the rules are the same, the results can look very different depending on how that stock trades, so it is worth evaluating the strategy on each symbol before you commit it to your routine.

How should I think about mixing daily and weekly strategies in one routine?

You can absolutely mix daily and weekly strategies in the same routine. In many cases it can be helpful, especially if you like Micah’s Probability Stacking idea inside the PayDay Cycle framework.

A simple way to think about it:

If you mix both, naming becomes important. Renaming your strategies to make the timeframe obvious, for example “AAPL PDC Daily” and “AAPL PDC Weekly,” makes your Subscriptions list and Strategy Notification emails much easier to read. It also helps you remember which signal you are reacting to when several alerts appear on the same symbol.

If I edit a Pre-Built Strategy in Strategy Builder, am I changing it for everyone else?

No. Editing a Pre-Built Strategy does not change it for anyone else.

When you open a Pre-Built Strategy in Strategy Builder and make changes, the version you save is treated as your own strategy. It is stored separately in your account and can be subscribed to, renamed, and managed like any other strategy you have created.

The original community version remains available to everyone in the Pre-Built Strategies list with its original rules and name.

Where can I learn more about how strategy rules are evaluated?

If you want to understand how the platform interprets entry and exit rules, how those rules are evaluated at the close, and how that turns into trade history and alerts, you will find that in the Strategy Logic Guide under the Strategy Builder section.

That guide is designed to be the “under the hood” companion to the Pre-Built Strategies articles, so you can go there when you want more detail than the high level explanations in this FAQ.

Performance, edge, and expectations

When will I start seeing results?

Pre-Built Strategies are built from statistical models, not one-off “home run” trades, so results usually show up over a series of trades, not overnight.

What you see in the platform is how a strategy behaved over a chosen lookback period. In the Strategies area and in Strategy Builder, you can switch the lookback to 1, 3, 5, or 10 years. Each setting answers a slightly different question, for example:

If you are looking at a 1 year sample, the stats you see describe what happened across all the trades in that year. To aim for something similar in real trading, you would usually need to treat it as a multi-trade process, apply the rules consistently, and avoid skipping most of the signals.

Even then, live results will never line up perfectly with the backtest because your timing, fills, and decisions will always differ.

How do I know if a strategy has “stopped working” in the current market?

There is no exact line where a strategy officially “stops working,” because markets are always changing. What you can do is compare how the strategy is behaving now with how it behaved in its own history.

Some things to watch for:

If a strategy starts to drift far away from its historical personality, many traders will respond by reducing position size, pausing it, or moving it back to paper tracking until it either settles back into character or is replaced.

There is always judgment involved here. The goal is not to react to every losing streak, but to notice when the strategy’s behavior has changed enough that you no not trust it the way you did before.

The strategy stats used to look great, but the recent trades are rough. What should I do?

A rough patch does not automatically mean the edge is gone. Every backtest you see on the platform already includes losing trades and cold streaks. The key question is whether what you are seeing now is:

A practical approach is:

If the current drawdown and win rate are roughly in line with past rough patches, you may decide it is still within expectations. If they are clearly worse than anything in its history, you might scale down, pause the strategy, or replace it with another model that you trust more.

Why do some strategies show huge returns with very few trades?

This usually means the strategy has a very small sample size, for example only a handful of trades inside the lookback period.

A small number of trades can produce impressive returns simply because one or two trades happened to work out very well. The fewer trades there are, the harder it is to know whether that behavior is stable or just luck.

When you see huge returns with very few trades, it is usually better to treat that strategy as a candidate for further testing instead of assuming it will behave the same way going forward. For many traders, strategies with a larger number of trades and more stable looking behavior feel easier to trust.

Why did the stats on my strategy change since I last checked?

Strategy stats are recalculated from market data, so they are not fixed.

Common reasons you see changes include:

Because strategies are evaluated on live data as time passes, it is normal for the numbers to move around. What matters most is the bigger pattern, not any single snapshot.

Why does my performance look different from the backtest?

Even if you try to trade a strategy very closely to how it is modeled, your results will almost never match the backtest exactly. Some common reasons:

The closer your behavior is to the way the strategy is tested, the closer your performance is likely to be to its historical pattern, although there are no guarantees. The backtest is a guide to what the strategy tends to do, not a promise that your equity curve will look identical.

What should I do with a strategy that has great stats but feels uncomfortable to trade?

A strategy is only useful if you can actually stick with it.

If the drawdowns, trade frequency, or price swings make you nervous, you might:

There is no requirement to use every high performing strategy you see. Your risk tolerance and your ability to sleep at night matter just as much as the stats on the screen.

What is a sensible way to “graduate” a strategy from testing to real money?

A simple progression that many traders use looks like this:

Find the strategy, review the backtest, study the chart shading, and make sure the behavior fits your style on paper.

Track the strategy for a period of time in a paper account or with minimal position size while you watch how it behaves through a few trades and alerts.

Once you are comfortable with its behavior and alert rhythm, commit a small, repeatable amount of capital and trade it consistently for a series of signals.

If the live behavior continues to match what you expect and you are comfortable with the swings, you can gradually increase your size, always within your overall risk limits.

At any point, you can pause, scale down, or retire the strategy if it stops matching your expectations or your comfort level.

Alerts, emails, and daily workflow

What if I miss a Starting alert on the day it fires?

Backtests assume trades are evaluated at or near the daily close on the day the entry conditions are met. If you enter on the next day instead, you are already doing something different from what is modeled.

If you missed a Starting alert and are looking at it a day late, it is usually worth:

You can still choose to enter, but your results will not match the backtest as closely, and the risk may be different than what the stats suggest.

Why do I sometimes see different signals for the same stock?

This usually happens when you are subscribed to more than one strategy on the same symbol.

Each strategy uses its own rules and timeframe. That means it is completely possible for one strategy on AAPL to be Starting a trade while another is Ending or staying Inactive. For example:

This is not an error. It just reflects that different models can interpret the same price action in very different ways. To keep this manageable, many traders either:

My Strategy Notification emails suddenly got quiet. Did my alerts stop working?

There are a few possibilities.

If you are still receiving the email and it says something like “None of the strategies you are subscribed to have any activity today,” that just means there were no new Starting or Ending events for your subscriptions on that session.

If you are not receiving the email at all:

If everything looks correct and the emails are still not arriving, you can always reach out to Support so we can check your settings from our side.

I got an alert, but I do not see shaded trades on the chart. What is going on?

Trade shading is controlled separately from alerts.

To make sure you are looking at the right thing:

If you still cannot see trades:

Alerts and trade shading are related, but independent. An alert tells you what the rules are doing today. Trade Highlights let you see how those rules played out on past bars.

How many strategies should I subscribe to at once?

Technically you can subscribe to a large number of strategies. Practically, there is a limit to how many you can track and make decisions from.

If you subscribe to dozens of strategies across many symbols, your Strategy Notification emails can become crowded and hard to interpret. It becomes difficult to tell which signals you actually plan to act on.

A simpler approach is to:

It is usually better to work with a handful of well chosen strategies that you can actually follow than with a long list that you mostly ignore.

Is there a recommended way to avoid clashes between strategies on the same symbol?

Yes. A bit of structure helps a lot here.

You can:

The important part is that you are not treating conflicting alerts as a problem the platform should “fix.” They are simply different models. Your job is to decide which one you rely on for trades, and whether any others are context rather than direct signals.

Do strategy alerts tell me exactly what to trade?

Strategy alerts tell you what the strategy is doing on its tested symbol, not exactly what you must trade or how you must size it.

By design:

You can choose to trade shares, options, or something else based on the signal, but that decision, the instrument, and the risk per trade are entirely up to you. Use alerts as structured prompts, and always filter them through your own plan.

How do Pre-Built Strategies fit with my other Opportunity Radars like the Doji Screener or Seasonality?

You can think of each Opportunity Radar as a different lens on the market:

A few practical ways traders combine them:

They are meant to support each other, not replace each other. Pre-Built Strategies tell you “what this rule set would do.” The other radars help you decide where to focus and when conditions might be more favorable.

Risk, capital, and account usage

Does Wallstreet.io tell me how many shares or contracts to trade, or how much to risk?

No. Wallstreet.io does not calculate or recommend position size for you.

Strategy stats are based on a simple model, usually assuming you buy and sell stock on the tested symbol. They are there to show how the strategy rules behaved over time, not how you should size your trades.

You are responsible for deciding:

Many traders use their own money management rules on top of the strategy signals. Wallstreet.io does not see your broker account and does not manage your positions for you.

Are Pre-Built Strategies financial advice?

No. Pre-Built Strategies are research and educational tools, not personal financial advice.

WallStreet.io is not registered as a broker-dealer or investment advisor with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission or with any state securities regulatory authority. The platform is for educational purposes only and is not a trade advisory service.

Any examples, strategies, or backtests you see are illustrations of how certain rule sets have behaved on historical data. They are not recommendations to buy or sell any specific security. Past results of any trading system or methodology do not guarantee future results.

You remain fully responsible for your own trading decisions and for managing your risk.

What should I do before I size up a strategy I like?

Before you commit more capital to any strategy, it helps to be very clear about what you are dealing with.

Many traders will:

Look at the equity curve, typical drawdowns, trade frequency, and average trade duration in the lookback period you care about. Make sure the swings and dry spells are something you can realistically live through.

A strategy with sharp swings or long losing streaks might look fine on a chart but feel very different when real money is on the line. If it keeps you up at night, it may not be the right candidate to scale.

Many people track a strategy in a paper account or trade it with minimal size for a stretch of trades. The goal is to see how it behaves in current market conditions and how you handle the alerts and decisions in real time.

Once you are comfortable with its behavior, you can choose how much capital you are willing to allocate and what your personal limits are per trade and per strategy.

None of this removes risk, and there are no guarantees that a strategy will behave the same way in the future. The purpose of this process is to help you scale thoughtfully instead of rushing into larger trades just because the backtest looks good.

Platform mechanics, privacy, and limits

Can Wallstreet.io see or manage my broker account when I click “View” or subscribe to a strategy?

No. Wallstreet.io does not see or control your broker account.

When you click View in a Strategy Notification email or subscribe to a strategy inside the platform, you are only changing settings inside your Wallstreet.io account. The platform does not place orders for you, does not see your positions or balances, and does not have access to your broker login.

You always place trades separately through your own broker, using the signals and tools on Wallstreet.io as research and decision support.

Can I see how many other traders are subscribed to the same strategy?

No. At the moment, strategy subscriptions are private.

You can see which strategies you are subscribed to in your own Subscriptions view, but you cannot see how many other traders are using the same strategy or who they are. Strategy popularity is not displayed as a metric in the platform.

What happens if I unsubscribe from a strategy?

Unsubscribing removes that strategy from your Subscriptions list and stops future alerts for it. You will no longer see it in the Subscriptions view or receive Starting or Ending notifications from it.

The strategy itself is not deleted. It remains available in the Community list, and you can subscribe to it again later if you decide you want it back in your workflow.

Why do I not see many green Strategy Profile charts? Are “good” strategies rare or just hard to find?

The Strategy Profile chart is designed to be selective, so it is normal not to see many green profiles.

The spider chart shows how a strategy scores across several dimensions, such as profit behavior, risk, volatility, and consistency. The color reflects how the internal scoring model evaluates those dimensions as a whole. In general:

The formula that produces these scores is proprietary, and the thresholds for green are intentionally high. That is why green profiles are relatively rare, and there is currently no way to sort or filter the strategy list by profile color alone.

Rather than hunting only for green charts, a more practical approach is to:

A green profile can be a useful positive signal, but it is not the only sign of a “good” strategy. Context, behavior, and your own comfort level matter just as much.