Why Your Backtest and Live Trading System Must Run Identical Code
A common but overlooked reason quant trading strategies fail in live markets is that the backtest and live systems run different code, effectively testing two separate strategies. Issues such as lookahead bias, conditional branches, and inconsistent data handling all stem from this divergence. The recommended fix is to build a single pure function — called identically by both a backtest adapter and a live adapter — that takes market state as input and returns a trade decision without side effects. This architecture makes lookahead bias structurally impossible and ensures that parameter optimization reflects the real deployed strategy. While sharing one code path eliminates a critical class of errors, developers must still separately account for slippage, fees, latency, and market regime changes to achieve full realism.
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