Pro Lab: 18 research tools for crypto, stocks and forex
Pro Lab is a workspace inside AlertaChart with eighteen research tools. Each one answers a question traders keep asking: is the market calm or stretched, when does this coin move, which CME gaps are still open, what does holding a perpetual against spot pay, did this setup work anywhere but on one chart?
Every tool reads real market data: exchange candles and order books, the funding and open interest AlertaChart records, the Fed and US labour calendars, CME futures and crypto options. Open it from the flask on the right-hand toolbar, or on a phone from the analysis centre under the chart.
Alerts and strategy testing
Alerts built from several conditions, every setting of a strategy tested at once, one strategy on a whole list, and your own script run across many symbols.
Multi-condition alerts: RSI, volume and open interest in one alert
Join up to five conditions in one alert: price against a moving average or VWAP, RSI, MACD, ATR, volume and relative volume, and order flow added up across exchanges such as open interest, funding, net buying and liquidations. The alert fires when all of them hold on the same bar close, when any one holds, or when they happen in order within the bars you allow.
Preview runs the conditions over the last 1,000 bars and marks every bar where the alert would have fired. Alerts are then watched around the clock, with AlertaChart closed, on crypto pairs of Binance, Bybit, OKX and Coinbase and on Hyperliquid perpetuals, and reach your phone, Telegram and the site.
Questions it answers
- RSI crossing 30 while volume is 1.5 times its average
- Price above the 200 EMA while open interest is rising
- A funding spike, then long liquidations, in that order
Strategy optimizer: every setting, a walk-forward test and Monte Carlo
Run an AlertaScript strategy with every combination of up to three of its number inputs, up to 100 backtests in one run, on 1,000 to 5,000 bars. Each cell of the heat map is one backtest, coloured by net profit, profit factor, drawdown, Sharpe, Sortino, win rate or the number of trades.
A setting whose neighbours also do well is more trustworthy than a single bright cell, which is marked as a likely overfit. The walk-forward check optimizes on the first 70% of the bars and runs the best three settings on the last 30% they never saw, and Monte Carlo replays the chosen setting's trades 1,000 times to show the range of drawdowns.
Questions it answers
- Which EMA lengths worked, and is that a plateau or one lucky cell?
- Do the best settings hold on bars they never saw?
- How deep could the drawdown get with the same trades in another order?
Group backtest: one strategy on a whole list of symbols
Run one strategy with the same settings on up to 40 symbols: a ready template, one of your scripts or code you paste, on a watchlist or a ready list of top coins, perpetuals, US large caps or forex and indices.
You see on how many symbols it made money and beat buying and holding, each symbol's result, and the whole list as one capital against buying and holding the same list. When one symbol carries half the profit or more, the tool says so.
Questions it answers
- Does the strategy have an edge, or does it fit one chart?
- Which symbols carry the result?
- What did the whole list do as one portfolio?
Script screener: run your own script on 60 symbols
Run any AlertaScript on up to 60 symbols at once: a ready template, one of your scripts, or code you write. Each plotted value becomes a column, and each alert condition shows whether it holds on the last closed bar or how many bars ago it last did.
Filter the table by a value or by a condition that held within some bars, open any row for its full history, and go to its chart from there.
Questions it answers
- Which coins just left oversold RSI?
- Where does my own indicator's condition hold right now?
- Which stocks on the list are above their trend line?
The market as a whole
Who is leading and who is lagging, how your symbols move together, prices that drift apart and come back, the Fed and CPI, and what funding pays.
Rotation map: a relative rotation graph for coins and stocks
Place up to 40 coins or stocks by two measures against a benchmark such as Bitcoin or the S&P 500: how strong their trend is next to it, and whether that strength is growing. The four corners show who is leading, weakening, lagging or improving.
Each symbol leaves a tail of its last steps, and Replay plays the past back so you can watch the rotation unfold. Symbols usually turn clockwise: improving, then leading, weakening and lagging.
Questions it answers
- Which altcoins are gaining on Bitcoin?
- Which sectors are rotating into leadership?
- Is a coin's strength fading before its price shows it?
Correlation and beta: Bitcoin against stocks, gold and the dollar
A correlation matrix of up to 40 symbols over 30, 90 or 180 days or a year of daily returns, with similar symbols side by side. Pick a cell to see that pair's rolling correlation over time.
The beta table says how much each symbol moved for a 1% move of the benchmark, with a downside beta read only from the falling bars. The highlights name the best diversifiers and the pairs that recently drifted apart.
Questions it answers
- Is my portfolio spread out, or does it move as one block?
- How closely does Bitcoin follow the S&P 500 lately?
- Which coin moves 1.5 times Bitcoin?
Pairs trading: cointegration, hedge ratio and z-score
Scan every pair of up to 20 symbols, 190 pairs, for cointegration with the Engle-Granger test. For each pair you get the hedge ratio, the half-life of a stretch and how many standard deviations the spread is from its mean right now.
Open a pair for its z-score over time, the two prices side by side, and a test that trades the spread back to its mean: in at ±2, out at 0, stopped at ±4.
Questions it answers
- Which two prices keep returning to each other?
- Is the spread stretched now?
- Would trading it back to the mean have paid?
Macro event impact: how Bitcoin moves on Fed, CPI and jobs days
Line up a coin, stock or currency hour by hour around past Fed rate decisions, US inflation (CPI) and jobs reports, from a day before to three days after: the median path, the middle half of the releases, and how often price closed higher.
A table compares the move after each release with a normal day, another shows which of the three releases moves the symbol most, and the top line gives the next release in your time with its typical move.
Questions it answers
- How much does Bitcoin usually move after an FOMC decision?
- Does CPI or the Fed move my symbol more?
- When is the next release, in my time?
Funding carry: funding rate arbitrage, perpetual against spot
Rank coins by what their perpetual futures pay in funding right now on Binance, Bybit, OKX, Coinbase and Hyperliquid: short the perpetual against spot, long it against spot, or the widest gap between two exchanges. Every rate is put on the same period and read as % a year.
Pick a coin to see each exchange's rate over 1, 7 and 30 days, the share of payments that went to shorts, and what a $10,000 short perpetual was paid over the month.
Questions it answers
- Which coins pay the most for a delta-neutral carry trade?
- Has that rate been steady, or was it one spike?
- Which two exchanges disagree most on funding?
Research on one symbol
Its past moments that looked like now, where its levels stack up, CME gaps, how fast it moves against its own history, when it moves, and what came after extreme funding or open interest.
Historical analogs: when did the chart last look like this?
Search a symbol's own history for the stretches whose shape was most like the last 20 to 120 bars, and see what price did next in each: the median, the middle half and every single path.
Match volatility ranks lower the stretches that moved much more or much less than now. It is a comparison with the past, not a forecast, and the tool says how small the sample is.
Questions it answers
- What happened the last times the chart had this shape?
- How wide is the range of outcomes?
- How deep were the drawdowns along the way?
Level confluence: where support and resistance stack up
Gather the levels around the price and see where they meet: prior day, week and month highs and lows, swing points, Fibonacci, volume profile, moving averages, round numbers, estimated liquidation clusters and, for coins with options, call and put walls, max pain and the gamma flip.
Zones are scored by how many different kinds meet and how strong each one is, so a zone where liquidations, options and volume agree outranks a single line.
Questions it answers
- Where is the strongest resistance above the price?
- Which kinds of levels make up this zone?
- Is the price sitting inside a zone right now?
CME gaps: every Bitcoin and Ether gap and how often it filled
Until 29 May 2026, CME's Bitcoin and Ether futures stopped over weekends and holidays and often reopened away from where they stopped: a CME gap. Since then they trade around the clock. The tool finds every gap from before that date, measures how often and how soon price came back to close it, and lists the gaps still open.
Filter by the smallest gap to count, read the results by size, and press Alert me on an open gap to hear when price reaches it.
Questions it answers
- Is there an open CME gap, and where?
- How often do Bitcoin CME gaps fill, and how fast?
- Do big gaps fill as often as small ones?
Volatility cone: is the market calm or stretched?
Measure how much a symbol has moved over windows of 5 to 180 days, spread every past window of each length into a range, and see where the latest one sits in it, in % a year and as a percentile.
Under the 25th percentile the symbol is calm for itself; over the 75th it is stretched; from the 90th it is among the fastest it has ever moved. On stocks the windows count trading days.
Questions it answers
- Is Bitcoin's volatility low or high for Bitcoin?
- Are options priced against a calm or a wild stretch?
- Which window is the most unusual right now?
Hour × weekday map: when does Bitcoin move?
Every hourly bar placed on its weekday and hour, on your clock or in UTC: the average move, its size and the share of hours that closed up, for each of the 168 cells.
An hour only counts as standing out when it clears the bar for 168 cells read at once, 3.62 standard errors, so a pattern that is just chance stays pale.
Questions it answers
- What is the best time to trade Bitcoin?
- How much quieter are weekends?
- Does any hour really rise or fall more often than chance?
Flow events: price after extreme funding or open interest
Find every hour a coin's funding or open interest moved unusually far from its last 30 days in AlertaChart's own recordings: funding very high or very low, open interest surging or flushing.
Then see what price did 4, 24 and 72 hours later, next to the same spans after any hour, so you can tell whether the extreme meant anything.
Questions it answers
- What does Bitcoin do after an open interest surge?
- Is very high funding a reason to fade the move?
- How unusual is today's funding?
Planning and reviewing your trades
The odds and the size of a trade before you take it, an options position before you build it, and what your own trades say afterwards.
Trade planner: target before stop, position size and alerts
Enter an entry, a stop and one or two targets, or use quick stops 1 to 2 ATR away and targets at 1R to 3R. The planner gives two estimates of how often the target came before the stop: the symbol's own history, and 3,000 simulated paths at today's volatility.
It adds the expectancy after fees, reward to risk, the break-even win rate and the position size for the risk you choose, then sets price alerts at every level in one go.
Questions it answers
- How often did a 2R target come before a 1.5 ATR stop?
- How big should the position be for 1% risk?
- Is this trade worth taking after fees?
Option strategy builder: payoff, greeks and the cheapest venue
Build a crypto options position leg by leg, or from a ready strategy such as a spread, a straddle or an iron condor. See its profit and loss at every price, at expiry or earlier, its break-evens, its exact maximum profit and loss, and the greeks of the whole position.
Where each leg is cheapest compares Deribit, OKX, Bybit and Binance: a leg you buy is priced at the lowest ask, a leg you sell at the highest bid.
Questions it answers
- What does a bull call spread pay, and where does it break even?
- How does the position change if volatility moves?
- Which venue has the best price for each leg?
Trade journal: MAE, MFE and what works for you
Keep your trades by hand, or bring them in from Binance futures and spot history, broker statements, Alerta Practice and Bar Replay. Each closed trade is measured against the chart: how far it went for you (MFE) and against you (MAE), and how much of the best move you kept.
The analysis gives net profit, win rate, profit factor and expectancy with an equity curve, names the setups and habits that clearly win or lose, and maps your results by day and hour.
Questions it answers
- Do I cut winners too early?
- Which setup actually makes money?
- On which days and hours do I trade worst?
Plans
Pro Lab comes with the Pro and Elite plans, alongside the order-flow tools, Alerta Chain Lab and the other Pro features.
Questions about Pro Lab
What is Pro Lab?
A workspace inside AlertaChart with eighteen research tools: multi-condition alerts, a strategy optimizer, group backtests, a script screener, the rotation map, correlation and beta, pairs, macro event impact, funding carry, historical analogs, level confluence, CME gaps, the volatility cone, the hour × weekday map, flow events, a trade planner, an option strategy builder and a trade journal.
Which plans include Pro Lab?
Pro and Elite. Other plans can open the window and see what each tool does.
Which markets does it work on?
Most tools read any symbol you can chart: coins, US stocks, forex pairs, metals and indices. Funding carry, flow events and the option strategy builder are about crypto, and CME gaps covers CME's Bitcoin and Ether futures.
Does it work on a phone?
Yes. In the app or the mobile site, open the analysis centre from the chart's bottom bar and choose Pro Lab; every tool is laid out for the small screen.
Do I need to write code?
No. The group backtest and the script screener come with ready templates. The strategy optimizer runs one of your own AlertaScript strategies or code you paste.
Can I set alerts from Pro Lab?
Yes: multi-condition alerts are watched around the clock, the trade planner sets alerts at your entry, stop and targets, and an open CME gap has an Alert me button.
What is a CME gap?
Until 29 May 2026, CME's Bitcoin futures stopped trading over the weekend while coins kept trading, so the contract often reopened away from Friday's close. Since then the futures trade around the clock, so no new gaps form. Many of the gaps were later traded back into; the CME gaps tool measures how often and how soon that happened.
What is funding rate arbitrage?
Holding a coin on spot and shorting the same amount of its perpetual future, so price moves cancel and the funding the shorts receive is the income. It turns into a cost when funding turns negative, and fees and the exchange still carry risk; funding carry shows which coins paid most and how steady that was.
Is Pro Lab investment advice?
No. The tools measure what happened in the past and say how much of it may be chance. They do not tell you what to buy or sell.
Try it on your own symbols
Open Pro Lab from the chart and start with the tool that answers today's question.