They were originally intended to toggle the chart zoom width to a week, month, or the entire backtest range. I don't know when they stopped working but we'll look into it, thanks for bringing it to our attention!
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Thank you ! I assumed that was what they were for, but thought that perhaps they were doing something in the background to my backtest data. Id like to see them functioning, I'm trying to work out a bug that pops up after 3-4 years of backtesting from 2006 on one of my algorithms. It utilizes some machine learning, so when isolating and backtesting the problem area, it doesn't make the exact same decisions. It may not help a lot, but being able to view the algorithms individual statistics over a smaller period of time (from a larger backtest) could provide me (and perhaps others) with insights that may stimulate some solutions.
I don't know if you intended the backtests statistics (...sortino, alpha, beta...) to also be reflected by the period change, but if not, consider adding that function as well :)