Edge Score is Quantprove's Mode 1 (Backtest) output: a 0 to 100 score that grades how real and how strong a trading strategy's edge is on historical data. Quantprove reads your backtest across four areas, edge magnitude, edge consistency, downside risk, and tradability, then scales the result down when the sample is small, so a short backtest cannot fake a high number. An Edge Score of 56 or above means the strategy shows a genuine, tradeable edge, and 71 or above means a strong one.
Why does Edge Score matter for traders?
Every backtest looks good to the person who built it. That is the problem. A strategy can show a clean equity curve and still have no real edge, because the curve was shaped to fit the past instead of finding something that actually repeats.
Edge Score exists to settle that question with a number. Instead of staring at a curve and hoping, you get a 0 to 100 grade that tells you whether the edge is real, how strong it is, and how much of it is likely to survive once real money is on the line.
It does the work a careful quant would do by hand: checking the size of the edge, how steady it is, what the worst stretches look like, and whether you could actually trade the thing without getting shaken out along the way.
In simpler words: Edge Score tells you whether your backtest found a real edge or just got lucky.
What does Edge Score measure?
Edge Score looks at four things, the same four a careful trader would check before trusting a system:
- Edge magnitude. How much the strategy makes per trade, and how often it makes it.
- Edge consistency. Whether the returns are steady month to month or lean on a few lucky trades.
- Downside risk. How deep and how long the losing stretches get, including the rare bad ones.
- Tradability. Whether a real person could sit through the drawdowns and keep trading the system.
A strategy has to do well across all four to earn a high score. A big return with brutal drawdowns, or a smooth curve built on a handful of trades, gets marked down.
How does Edge Score handle sample size?
A backtest with 40 trades and one with 4,000 trades do not deserve the same trust, even when they look identical on the chart. Edge Score knows this.
Quantprove scales the score by how much data stands behind it. A small sample gets pulled down, because a short run of trades is the easiest way to land a great looking result by pure chance. The more trades the backtest has, the closer the score moves to its full weight.
This is the same reason a real edge should hold up out of sample, not only in the data it was discovered in. Small samples flatter strategies, which is exactly the trap the Deflated Sharpe Ratio was built to expose.
What are the Edge Score tiers?
Edge Score reads on a 0 to 100 scale, in six bands:
- 86+Exceptional
- 71 to 85Strong Edge
- 56 to 70Moderate Edge
- 41 to 55Developing
- 21 to 40Weak Edge
- Below 21No Edge
Where is Edge Score used in Quantprove?
Edge Score is the core output of Mode 1 (Backtest), the first stage in Quantprove's workflow.
It grades the backtest on its own. From there, Stability Score checks whether your live trades still match that backtest, and Health Score watches the live edge over time to catch it fading. Edge Score is the entry exam, Stability Score the graduation check, Health Score the ongoing monitor.
For the mistakes that most often inflate an Edge Score, see common backtest mistakes.
Frequently asked questions
References
Related terms
- Health Score — A 0-100 combined score that shows whether a live strategy’s edge is still holding or quietly decaying over time.
- Stability Score — A 0-100 combined score that measures how closely a live trading strategy follows the edge from backtesting.
- Expectancy — What one average trade is worth to you, after the wins and losses cancel out.
- Sortino Ratio — How much return a strategy earns for the losses it actually makes you feel.