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MangoTheta Guide

From idea to live trading

This guide follows one strategy through the app, page by page. Each step links to the page that explains it in detail.

The example strategy: sell the NIFTY at-the-money straddle at 09:20, with a 25% stop loss on each leg, and close everything at 15:15.

1. Build and backtest

Section titled “1. Build and backtest”
  1. Open the Strategy Builder. Set the underlying to NIFTY, the entry time to 09:20 and the square-off time to 15:15.
  2. In the Leg Builder, add two legs: SELL CE ATM and SELL PE ATM, each with a 25% stop loss.
  3. Choose a period of at least a few months, and run the backtest.
  4. Click SAVE. The strategy goes to your My Strategies.

2. Read the result honestly

Section titled “2. Read the result honestly”

Open the result and work through Check these first:

  • read the yellow notes at the top;
  • check Total trades: a handful of trades proves little;
  • look at the maximum drawdown: could you sit through that loss with real money?

Then add costs in Editable Costs: tick the government charges and type your brokerage and slippage. Judge the strategy on Net PnL (after costs).

Example: a straddle that trades every day makes 4 fills a day. At ₹20 brokerage per fill that is ₹80 a day, about ₹1,700 a month, before government charges and slippage.

3. Tune, carefully

Section titled “3. Tune, carefully”

If the idea looks worth more work, try other values, for example stop losses from 20% to 40%. Use AutoTune and then Walk Forward to check that the chosen value works on months it was not tuned on.

Read Tune without fooling yourself before you trust any tuned result.

4. Run it on paper

Section titled “4. Run it on paper”
  1. In the Live Deployments, click Deploy New and pick your strategy. It arrives Stopped, in Paper mode.
  2. Click Start. During market hours it trades at live prices with simulated fills (see How Paper fills work). No order goes to a broker.
  3. Watch it on Positions and review each day in the Trading Journal.
  4. Let it run for a few weeks. Compare its results with what the backtest led you to expect for the same kind of days.

5. Go live, small

Section titled “5. Go live, small”
  1. Connect your broker in Brokers & Execution and check it with Check Live Brokers.
  2. Set your limits: the Pre-Trade Risk Limits and the daily loss limit on the Risk Dashboard.
  3. Stop the deployment, switch it from Paper to Live (see Switching between Paper and Live), and start with one lot.
  4. Check Positions against your broker’s own app, especially on the first days.

Example: the straddle’s worst backtest day lost ₹7,800 on one lot. You set the Risk Dashboard’s Daily Max Loss to ₹10,000 and the strategy’s Max Loss (live) to ₹8,000. You keep Max order quantity low enough that a typo cannot send 50 lots. Then you go live with 1 lot. Only after a few weeks that look like the paper run do you consider a second lot.