Help & Guide

The example we will build

“Buy quality stocks on an oversold dip inside an uptrend, risk 8%, hold up to 45 days.” We will create it, test it, deploy it, and watch it trade, in about five minutes.

Step 1 · Create the strategy (two ways)

Easiest, describe it: open Build with AI Flow and type into the “Describe a strategy in plain words” box:

rsi below 30 and price above 200 day average, 8% stop, hold 45 days

Click Turn into flow. The platform shows what it understood: rsi(14) < 30, close > sma(200), exit at 8% stop or 45 days. If that matches your idea, click Build flow to draw it on the canvas, check the Risk check block, then click Save.

Or pick a ready one: open Discover, choose “Mean Reversion Oversold” (the same idea, pre-built), and click Copy to my strategies. Strategies marked PRO need a paid plan.

Step 2 · Test it before trusting it

In Discover, select the strategy, pick NIFTY Large-cap and a date range (several years is better than months), and click Backtest results. Read three things: total P&L after charges, the number of trades (under 30 trades is an anecdote, not evidence), and the year-by-month grid (an edge that lived in only one good year is a warning). You can also test it on your own CSV data in My Data.

Step 3 · Deploy it

Saving from Build with AI Flow or copying from Discover deploys automatically. Check My Strategies: your strategy should show ● Deployed. The Deploy/Undeploy button there is the on/off switch; undeployed strategies never trade but stay available for testing.

Step 4 · Set your risk limits once

In Settings, set capital per trade (say ₹25,000), max open positions, a daily loss limit, and total exposure. Every strategy you deploy obeys these caps combined, and the kill switch halts all new entries instantly.

Step 5 · Let it trade, then review

Every weekday morning the platform scans with your deployed strategies and opens simulated positions that meet the rules, sized by your limits. You can also run a scan any time from Paper Trading. Then review on the Dashboard: click the strategy, a month, a day, then a stock, and you get the full story of each trade: why it was selected, the chart with the strategy’s own indicator lines, the exact entry candle, and the RSI at buy.

Reading your results honestly

Simulated results assume clean fills; real markets slip. Charges are estimated with standard rates. A high win rate over a handful of trades means little. Use the Advanced page (Pro) to stress-test: Monte Carlo shuffles your trade sequence to show the range of outcomes luck alone could produce, and walk-forward checks whether the strategy works on data it was not tuned on.

Where your prices come from

Out of the box every account runs on free delayed daily closing data. Nothing needs setting up, and the top bar says Yahoo so you always know what you are looking at. For strategies held for days or weeks, which is all of them here, this is enough: delayed data changes when a position is marked, not whether the trade was any good.

If you want live prices, add your own market data subscription under Market Data. You buy it from the vendor, you pay them directly, and SmartPaperDesk takes no cut and does not resell data. Two things worth knowing before you spend money. First, ask the vendor in writing whether their plan permits displaying prices inside a paper trading tool, because vendors differ. Second, start on their delayed or end-of-day tier rather than real time; it is much cheaper and does the same job unless you trade inside the day.

After saving, press Save and test. It fetches one real price and prints it. A number means your feed works. No number means the credential is wrong or the plan does not cover NSE equities, and you are still on delayed data until that is fixed. Press Test connection again any time, particularly if a subscription may have lapsed: the platform falls back to delayed data quietly rather than stopping your scans, so the test button is how you find out. Disconnect removes the credential immediately.

What SmartPaperDesk will never ask you for is a broker login. A broker credential can place orders, and there is no read-only version of one, so a promise not to trade would be a promise about our code rather than a limit on the key. A market data key can only read prices. Yours is encrypted, tied to your account alone, and never used to serve anybody else’s screen.

Getting alerts on Telegram

Scanner matches and stop-hit alerts already show up in-app and by email. To also get them on Telegram, open Profile and find Telegram Alerts. Click Connect Telegram. It opens a chat with SmartPaperDesk’s bot in a new tab, already set up for you. Click Start there and you are done; the Profile page shows ✓ Connected within a few seconds. Nothing to type, copy or configure.

Once connected, Send test message confirms it is working, and Disconnect turns it off any time; your in-app and email alerts keep working exactly as before either way. The connection is one bot shared by every SmartPaperDesk account, but each person’s alerts only ever go to the Telegram chat they personally connected; nobody else’s alerts can reach your chat, and yours can’t reach theirs.

Common questions

How many stocks does my scanner cover? On the Free plan every scan and every multi-stock backtest covers the complete Nifty 50, all 50 stocks, not a sample. Pro and Team can also scan and backtest the Large-cap, Mid-cap, Small-cap and Nifty 200 universes and your own watchlist. Why can’t I copy a PRO strategy? Those need a paid plan, see Billing. Why does it say Delayed · Yahoo? Live prices need your own data subscription, added under Market Data; without one, everything still works on daily closing data. Why can’t I connect Zerodha any more? SmartPaperDesk no longer asks for a broker login. A broker credential can place orders and has no read-only mode, so we ask for a market data key instead, which can only read prices. Do I need a Telegram account for alerts? No. Telegram alerts are optional, on top of the in-app and email alerts every account already gets; connect it from Profile only if you want a third channel.

Educational tool, not investment advice. See the Risk Disclaimer.