---
title: "Starting capital"
description: "Starting capital is the amount of money a backtest begins with. Changing it rescales every money figure proportionally and leaves every percentage unchanged."
canonical_url: "https://fincanva.com/docs/backtesting/starting-capital"
last_updated: "2026-07-25"
md_url: "https://fincanva.com/docs/backtesting/starting-capital.md"
---

# Starting capital

Starting capital is the amount of money a [backtest](/docs/getting-started/backtest) begins with — the initial portfolio value every simulated figure is scaled from. It is a single account-level setting, listed in Settings under "Simulation defaults" as **Starting capital** ("Initial portfolio value for new simulations."), and it applies to the strategies you own. Raising or lowering it rescales all the money figures a run produces and leaves the percentages — return, [drawdown](/docs/analysis/max-drawdown), [volatility](/docs/analysis/volatility) — essentially unchanged.

**Also seen as:** initial capital, initial portfolio value

## Does starting capital change a strategy's results?

Not in percentage terms. A strategy's rules do not depend on how much money is behind them, so the same rules over the same period produce the same percentage outcome at any capital; only the money amounts scale.

$$
\text{profit} = \text{starting capital} \times \text{total return}
$$

where total return is the strategy's return over the period as a fraction (so +45% is 0.45) and starting capital is the amount you set. Because the return is the same on both sides, the money figures move in exact proportion to the capital.

## When does starting capital actually matter?

It matters at small capital, because a portfolio can only hold whole shares. Each holding's ideal money amount is its [target notional](/docs/portfolio-holdings/target-notional), and that amount has to be rounded down to a whole number of shares, leaving a little cash unspent — see [target vs deployed](/docs/portfolio-holdings/target-vs-deployed). That leftover is a fixed size per holding but a much bigger slice of a small portfolio, so at low capital more of the target goes unfilled, [accuracy](/docs/portfolio-holdings/accuracy) is lower, and a high-priced instrument may not fit at its intended weight at all. At large capital the same rounding is negligible. The rounding is redone at every [rebalance](/docs/backtesting/rebalance), so at low capital the shortfall recurs rather than being a one-off at the start. What happens to cash the strategy is not holding in positions is covered by [interest received and paid](/docs/analysis/interest-received-and-paid).

## Defaults in Fincanva

- The default starting capital is 100,000, and the setting offers a fixed ladder of ten amounts from 10,000 up to 10,000,000. Each option is displayed in your [base currency](/docs/backtesting/base-currency).
- Starting capital is part of what identifies a simulation, so changing it means the results for your own strategies are recomputed on the new amount rather than converted.
- A public strategy you do not own is always computed on the default 100,000, whatever your own setting is — so its money figures will not match the ones you would get by copying it and running it yourself. Its percentages will.
- The Holdings view has its own [Capital](/docs/portfolio-holdings/capital) input for the target snapshot it shows — a different control, not this setting under another name. It starts at 100,000 rather than following your Starting capital setting, and changing it rescales that view only: the saved setting and the saved run are untouched.

## Worked example

Take the same strategy over the same period, once with 10,000 of starting capital and once with 100,000. Suppose it returns +45% over the period. The first run ends at 14,500 with a profit of 4,500; the second ends at 145,000 with a profit of 45,000 — ten times the money, the identical +45%, and the identical drawdown and volatility figures. The one real difference shows in the holdings: at 100,000 a 10% weight is 10,000, which buys 24 shares of an instrument trading at 412 and leaves 112 unspent; at 10,000 the same 10% weight is 1,000, which buys 2 shares and leaves 176 unspent — nearly 18% of that holding's target left in cash instead of 1%.

*The figures on this page describe what Fincanva models, not what you should do with your money — see [Is this financial advice?](/docs/investing-theory/is-this-financial-advice#is-this-financial-advice).*