Final value is what a strategy's capital is worth on the last date of its backtest: the value of every position it holds plus the cash it holds, in the currency the analysis is shown in — your base currency on a strategy you own, US dollars on a Public strategy, which is shown with default settings. It is the point where the capital chart's total-value curve ends, and it answers the plainest question a backtest can answer — "starting from my capital, what would I have ended up with?"
Also seen as: ending value, terminal value.
How is final value related to profit and total return?
Final value is the capital you started with plus everything the run gained or lost on the way:
where Invested is the capital the run started with — positions plus cash on its first date — and Profit is the money gained or lost over the whole run, which can be negative. Dividing the profit by what was invested gives the total return, so final value in money and total return in percent are two readings of one result.
In words: a final value above the starting capital is a gain, one below it is a loss, and the gap between the two is the profit.
What does "Vs benchmark" compare?
Vs benchmark is final value minus the benchmark's own final value, shown as a signed amount of money. The benchmark's money curve starts from the same capital on the same date, so the difference is a like-for-like verdict: a positive figure means the strategy ended with more money than the benchmark would have, a negative one means less. The percentage version of the same comparison is excess return.
What is Combined value on Allocation History?
Combined value is the figure the Allocation History page of a Combined opens with: the Combined's total worth on the last date of the run, across all the strategies it holds. It answers the same question final value answers, on the page that splits that worth between the strategies — see the allocations chart for how the split is read.
How does Fincanva handle it?
- Final value is the first figure on the Capital Growth page, and the same figure heads the page's Summary card as Current value, with the run's total return beside it. The card's Invested and Profit are the two terms of the relation above.
- It is shown in whole units of that currency.
- The last date of the run is the latest market close the data holds, not today's calendar date — see data freshness and frontier. A result that is refreshed later can therefore end on a later date and show a different final value.
- It follows the Simulation assumptions switches, and Costs & interests and Taxes are both off by default. With them off, final value is gross of both and the page says so: "These figures are gross of trading costs and taxes." Switching one of them on changes the label to name only the other. See the costs switch and the taxes switch.
What does it look like in practice?
A strategy starts with 100,000 in your base currency. On the last date of the run its positions are worth 131,400 and it holds 6,600 in cash, so its final value is 131,400 + 6,600 = 138,000. The Summary card reads the same 138,000 as Current value, with Invested 100,000 and Profit 38,000 — a total return of 38,000 ÷ 100,000 = 38%.
The benchmark, started from the same 100,000, ends at 129,500. Vs benchmark therefore reads +8,500: the strategy ended with 8,500 more than the benchmark would have.
What counts as a good final value?
There is no good final value on its own, because it depends on how much you started with and how long the run lasted. Two strategies with the same final value over ten years and over thirty years have very different results. To compare runs, read the rate — CAGR — and set it against the benchmark; to judge what the ride cost, read the drawdown beside it.
Where this term is used
Auto-generated · 1 pageThe pages that use this term: read it in context there.