Understanding the SIPS Workflow
The stages every workspace moves through: import, qualify, build, compare, analyse, connect and monitor.
Every SIPS workspace moves through the same broad journey. You don’t have to use every stage every time — but understanding the order helps everything else in SIPS make sense, because each stage reads what the previous one produced.
The stages
- Import — upload your StrategyQuant X Databank CSV and one trade-list CSV per strategy from Data & Imports. SIPS validates the files and, if every check passes, makes them your active dataset. See Data & Imports Overview.
- Qualify — straight after a successful import, SIPS checks every strategy against the Strategy rules in your Portfolio Settings and marks it Qualified or Failed. See Strategies.
- Build — run Portfolio Builder to search your qualified strategies for portfolios that pass your Portfolio rules, or hand-pick your own combination in Custom Builder.
- Compare — review the whole retained bank side by side in Portfolio Comparison.
- Analyse a portfolio — open any portfolio’s full detail in Portfolio Analysis.
- Connect & monitor — pair an MT5 account with the read-only SIPS Bridge and follow it on your Dashboard, including how its live behaviour compares with its own history. See Connecting an MT5 Account and Historical vs Live Behaviour.
Discover, build, compare
Portfolio Builder searches across your qualified strategies with the depth you choose (Quick, Recommended or Deep) and keeps the portfolios that pass every rule in the Portfolio tab of Portfolio Settings — that kept set is your retained portfolio bank. Portfolio Comparison then shows the whole bank at once: build summary, diversification, strategy reuse, ranking panels and a searchable, sortable table. From any row, Portfolio Analysis gives you the full drill-down into that one portfolio.
Custom & saved portfolios
Not every portfolio has to come from the automated search. Custom Builder lets you collect strategies from anywhere in SIPS, preview and validate the combination, and save it as your own Custom Portfolio. Every portfolio — the current run’s bank, portfolios you have saved, Custom Portfolios and portfolios used for an MT5 connection — is listed in Portfolio Log, which is also where you choose a portfolio to trade live.
A new Portfolio Builder run replaces the current bank only when it completes successfully; portfolios you saved, built yourself or connected to MT5 are kept.
Going live
When you trade a portfolio on MT5, you can connect that account through the SIPS Bridge. The Bridge is read-only: it reports what your account is actually doing, and SIPS compares that live behaviour with the portfolio’s own history. It never places, modifies or executes a trade on your behalf. If you also want trades copied between MT5 accounts, that is the separate Trade Copier.
Tip
You don’t need an MT5 connection to use most of SIPS. Importing, qualification, Portfolio Builder, Comparison, Analysis and Custom Builder all work from your imported data alone.