---
title: "Asset-selection modes"
description: "Asset-selection modes are the three ways a strategy decides what it may hold — Basket names instruments, Screen picks them by rule, and Compose combines both."
canonical_url: "https://fincanva.com/docs/getting-started/asset-selection-modes"
last_updated: "2026-08-19"
md_url: "https://fincanva.com/docs/getting-started/asset-selection-modes.md"
---

# Asset-selection modes

Asset-selection modes are the three ways a strategy decides which instruments it may hold: **Basket**, where you name the instruments yourself; **Screen**, where one screener picks them by rule at every rebalance; and **Compose**, where a basket and screener pools work together. They are peer modes on the strategy's **Asset selection** card, and the mode you are in is what the card's controls edit. The set of instruments that survives the mode is the strategy's [universe](/docs/getting-started/universe).

**Also seen as:** Easy and Pro (the screening modes the three modes are built on), Pick assets / Build a screen (retired labels for the Basket and Screen choice)

## What do Basket, Screen, and Compose do?

Each mode answers "what may this strategy hold?" a different way.

| Mode | How instruments are decided | What you edit |
|---|---|---|
| **Basket** | you name them — the instruments you add are the whole universe | a search field plus the table of instruments you have added (on a Single instrument strategy, one slot and a **Change** affordance) |
| **Screen** | one [screener](/docs/getting-started/screener) selects them by rule, re-evaluated at every rebalance | that screener's [filters](/docs/getting-started/filter) and its universe |
| **Compose** | a basket sets the scope, then screener pools qualify and reject inside it | the basket, the **Qualify** and **Reject** pools, and the selection rules |

An empty Basket is a real state, not a missing one: with nothing named, the strategy draws from the entire market and the card's readout says **All instruments**.

## How do Easy and Pro relate to the three modes?

**Easy** and **Pro** are the two screening modes the three asset-selection modes are built on, and they are underlying state rather than a control you operate: no surface shows an Easy/Pro toggle. The mapping is exact: **Basket** is Easy applied to instruments you name, **Screen** is Easy applied to a screener, and **Compose** is Pro. That is why Pro-only settings survive a trip through Easy — they belong to the same strategy, just to controls Easy does not show, and it is why the confirmation you get when leaving Compose still names both. **Step by step** and [All at once](/docs/getting-started/all-at-once) present these three states the same way, as one **Basket · Screen · Compose** control — and only on a Full setup strategy, as the next section explains.

## Which modes does each strategy type offer?

The card only offers the modes the [strategy type](/docs/getting-started/strategy-type) supports — there is no greyed-out placeholder for one it does not.

| Strategy type | Modes offered |
|---|---|
| **Single instrument** | Basket |
| **Multiple instruments** | Basket |
| **Screener** | Screen |
| **Full setup** | Basket · Screen · Compose |

The strategy type is a constraint on the card, not a starting preset: three of the four types have exactly one mode, so for them the **Basket · Screen · Compose** control is not shown at all — there is nothing to switch between. Only **Full setup** shows it, in **Step by step** exactly as in **All at once**. **Compose is therefore reachable from Full setup alone**, and with it the Qualify and Reject [screener pools](/docs/getting-started/screener-attach); a Screener strategy that needs a rejecting pool becomes a Full setup one.

Two consequences follow inside Basket. On **Single instrument** the mode is a single slot with a **Change** affordance rather than a list you add to — picking another instrument replaces the one held instead of extending a basket. And the Basket's **Filters** strip exists only under **Full setup**; on the two instrument types the mode names instruments and nothing else.

Changing type is not how an existing strategy loses a mode. A saved strategy whose content needs a wider surface than its type offers — instruments and a screener together, a second qualifying screener, a rejecting pool — is read as the wider type instead, so the card can still show everything the strategy holds. Nothing is trimmed to fit, and the widening never runs the other way: a Full setup strategy holding a single instrument stays Full setup.

## What is the working scope in Compose?

In Compose the basket is the working scope — the set of instruments the attached screeners are evaluated against. With instruments in the basket the screeners are evaluated against those instruments alone; with an empty basket they are evaluated against the entire market. This is the one mode where naming instruments and screening by rule are not alternatives: the basket bounds the search, and the [screener pools](/docs/getting-started/screener-attach) decide who inside it is held.

Compose also groups the strategy's **Selection rules** beside the pools — [**Max positions**](/docs/strategies/max-positions), the cap on how many instruments are held at once; [**Max hold**](/docs/strategies/max-hold-months), how long a position may be held; and [**Reinvest delay**](/docs/strategies/reinvest-delay), how long freed-up cash waits before being reinvested.

## Defaults in Fincanva

- The card's readout names the current state rather than the mode: **All instruments** for an empty Basket or an unfiltered Screen, a count of assets, a count of filters, or an assets-and-screeners pair in Compose. A Single instrument strategy shows no count — the one slot is already in view.
- Entering Compose, and switching between Basket and Screen, are non-destructive. Both apply to Full setup, the only type that offers more than one mode.
- On Basket the strategy holds what you picked: **Max positions** is set to the number of instruments in the basket rather than left as a control, so nothing you named is dropped for being over a cap. It stays a control on Screen and in Compose.
- Leaving Compose can leave settings that Basket and Screen have no control for. Fincanva confirms first and keeps them, and the confirmation names the underlying screening modes rather than the three: "Easy mode hides these Pro settings. They're kept and restored if you switch back to Pro:" — and it lists them: the extra qualifying screeners beyond the first, any rejecting screeners, custom hold and reinvest-delay timings, and the universe filters on the screener it keeps.
- Saving applies the active mode: in **Basket** the instruments you named are what the strategy keeps, and in **Screen** the screener definition is — a Screen save clears named instruments, because in Screen the rule is the selection.
- The strategy needs at least one instrument or one attached screener before it can be saved and run, whichever mode it is in.

## Worked example

Take the same ten US large caps and build the same idea three ways.

- **Basket** — you add all ten by name. The strategy's universe is exactly those ten, every rebalance, whatever the market does.
- **Screen** — you name nothing and instead write one screener whose filters describe the ten. The strategy holds whatever matches at each rebalance: nine of them one quarter, thirteen names the next, because membership is recomputed rather than fixed.
- **Compose** — you put the ten in the basket and attach one screener to **Qualify**. The candidate set never grows beyond your ten, but only the ones that qualify at that rebalance are held — six of ten in a quiet quarter, all ten in a strong one.

Same idea, three different answers to "what may this hold?": a fixed list, an open rule, and a rule applied inside a fixed list.