Look-ahead & leakage
Finds features that use information the strategy couldn't have had at decision time — the single most common way a backtest lies.
Independent strategy validation
Most backtests are wrong. Prove yours isn't.
A curve that goes up and to the right is the easiest thing in quant to fake — and the most expensive to trust. Provealpha is an agent that takes a strategy, hunts for the biases that inflate its Sharpe, runs proper walk-forward validation, and hands you a reproducible verdict on whether the edge is real before a dollar is at risk.
For researchers who would rather kill a bad idea early than in production.
Naive backtest
After bias checks
Walk-forward
Verdict
3.1
reported Sharpe
1.4
once leakage is removed
0.6
out-of-sample
Fragile
don't trade it yet
“It works in the backtest” is the beginning of the diligence, not the end of it.
What it is
A validation layer between your idea and your capital
Provealpha doesn't generate strategies and it isn't a research desk. It's the adversary you point at a signal you already believe in — the one that assumes you fooled yourself and tries to prove it, so that when a strategy passes, you know why.
The checks
The biases that quietly manufacture alpha
Survivorship
Checks whether your universe silently excludes the names that went to zero, and re-runs against the real, delisted-inclusive history.
Overfitting & selection
Accounts for how many variants you tried. Deflated Sharpe, multiple-testing corrections, and parameter sensitivity — not one lucky config.
Walk-forward validation
Trains and tests in rolling windows the way live trading actually unfolds, so out-of-sample means out-of-sample.
Costs & capacity
Applies realistic slippage, borrow, and market impact, and estimates the capital at which the edge decays to nothing.
Reproducibility
Pins data snapshots, seeds, and code so any result can be regenerated bit-for-bit — by you, a PM, or a risk committee.
The verdict
One report that survives a risk meeting
- ◦Adjusted performance, with each bias's cost to Sharpe itemized, not buried.
- ◦A clear call — robust, fragile, or overfit — with the evidence that led there.
- ◦Reproducible artifacts anyone can rerun, so the result outlives the meeting.
Who's building it
Built by someone who has run the real backtests
HRT
Quant ResearchHudson River Trading
IISc
ResearchIndian Institute of Science
IITM
UndergraduateIIT Madras
The gap between a strategy that looks good and one that is good is a full-time discipline — the bias hunts, the walk-forward rigor, the reproducibility. Most teams do that work inconsistently and under deadline. Provealpha makes it the default, so a researcher's judgment rests on numbers that are actually true.
Private beta
Bring a strategy. We'll try to break it.
We're onboarding a small group of systematic researchers and funds. Send us a signal you believe in — we'll run it through the full validation and tell you what's left standing.