---
title: "Home, the page you land on after signing in"
description: "What Home shows after you sign in: a top half about the strategies you follow live, Recently edited below it, and the behaviours that look like faults."
canonical_url: "https://fincanva.com/docs/getting-started/home-the-page-you-land-on-after-signing-in"
last_updated: "2026-08-29"
md_url: "https://fincanva.com/docs/getting-started/home-the-page-you-land-on-after-signing-in.md"
---

# Home, the page you land on after signing in

**Home** is the first page Fincanva opens after you sign in, and it is a summary rather than a workspace: it tells you what your strategies did, what needs attention, and what you were last working on, then sends you to the page that can act on it. This guide reads it top to bottom and answers the things about it that look like faults and are not.

↗ See this in Fincanva — the Home page

## What do I need before Home is useful?
Nothing beyond a signed-in account, and at least one strategy [marked Live](/docs/getting-started/mark-live) before the top of the page has anything to say. Home picks what to show you: a **first-run** version until you have saved anything at all, **Recently edited** on its own while nothing is marked Live, and the full board once something is.

## What does Home show on a brand-new account?
Until you have saved a strategy or a screener, Home shows three cards instead of a board — **Build a strategy**, **Screen the market** and **Follow it live** — each stating what that route is for, plus the **Fincanva templates** rail underneath.

There is no live book and no status tile on this version, because there is nothing yet for either to be about. Home switches to the full board from the first save onwards.

## Why does Home show me only "Recently edited"?
Because you have saved strategies but have not [marked any of them Live](/docs/getting-started/mark-live), and everything above **Recently edited** describes your live strategies only. With none of them live there is nothing for the date band, **Needs you** or the tiles to be about, so Home leaves the whole top half out rather than printing a green all-clear over an empty set.

This is not the first-run version: that one appears only while you have saved nothing at all, and it shows three route cards instead of **Recently edited**. Mark one strategy Live and the full top half is there the next time you open Home.

## What is on Home once I have strategies?
Two halves that describe two different sets. **Everything above Recently edited is about the strategies you have [marked Live](/docs/getting-started/mark-live), and only those.** **Recently edited** is about your whole book, every strategy in it, live or not.

The live half is one card at the top of the page, and that card has two layouts: a **Needs you** list when something is asking you for an action, and a dated verdict band when nothing is — never both at once, which is what [Why does the top of Home change shape from one day to the next?](#why-does-the-top-of-home-change-shape-from-one-day-to-the-next) below is about. Under that card sits **Your live book**, the ranked rail of your live strategies, covered further down.

Then the whole-book half: **Recently edited**, covered below too. The **Browse Fincanva templates** link sits last and belongs to neither half — it opens the **Public** tab of the strategy library, which is Fincanva's own catalogue rather than anything of yours.

Most mornings most of your book will read **Needs re-run**, because a result computed against an earlier market day is no longer current even when you have changed nothing — see [run status](/docs/backtesting/run-status). **Needs you** does not fill up with them, because it lists live strategies only and those are the ones Fincanva keeps current for you. One you merely saved arrives at **Needs re-run** because that is what you chose for it, and Home does not ask you to undo the choice.

## Why does the top of Home change shape from one day to the next?
Because the top of Home is one card with two layouts, and it shows exactly one of them: a **Needs you** list when something is asking you for an action, and a dated verdict band when nothing is. They never appear together, so a tile that was there yesterday can be gone today.

**When something needs you**, the card is a **Needs you** header with a count beside it, then up to five of your live strategies, each with the reason and the folder it lives in: one that **failed**, one that is **incomplete**, one you have never run, one with open configuration warnings, and one whose result is no longer current. Beside that list sit two tiles, **Next rebalances** and **Live book status**. The **View all in Portfolios** link at the top, and the **View all N** line under the rows, both open **Portfolios**, the page that lists exactly these strategies. There is no date band and no **Followed live** tile in this layout.

**When nothing needs you**, the card is the date band instead: `Today · {date}`, in your browser's own [time zone](/docs/backtesting/time-zone), with one sentence of verdict over your live strategies — for example `All 12 live strategies up to date`, `3 live strategies still computing`, `Couldn't reach the engine`, or a line saying Home is showing the most recently updated of a larger number of them. Beside it sit **Followed live** and **Next rebalances**. There is no **Needs you** block and no **Live book status** tile in this layout.

Two of the three tiles are therefore conditional. **Followed live** — how many strategies you are following live, with their **Median 1M** and how many are **Positive 1M** — appears only while nothing needs you. **Live book status** — your live strategies split into `up to date`, `computing`, `to re-run`, `to run`, `failed` and `incomplete` — appears only while something does. **Next rebalances** appears in both.

Which layout you get is decided in a fixed order, first match wins: something needs you, then Home could not reach the engine, then Home read only part of your live book, then something is still computing, then everything is up to date. **Needs you** comes first because an action outranks a wait, and the other four are all sentences of that same band. The order is also why `N live strategies still computing` is hard to catch in practice: a strategy that is computing is not something Home asks you to act on, so that sentence only ever appears on a live book where nothing else is asking for anything.

## Why is a strategy I never marked Live not flagged on Home?
Because the top half of Home describes your live strategies and nothing else, and the rule has no exception for a broken one: a strategy you never [marked Live](/docs/getting-started/mark-live) is not counted, ranked or flagged up there even when its last run **failed** or it is still **incomplete**. There is no other place on Home that flags it either.

It is not lost, and nothing about it has changed. It keeps its own [run status](/docs/backtesting/run-status) chip wherever it is listed, it appears in **Recently edited** if it is one of the five you touched most recently, and it is in **Strategies** with the rest of your book. Mark it Live and it joins **Needs you** the next time you open Home.

## What is in "Your live book"?
**Your live book** is the ranked rail of the strategies you have [marked Live](/docs/getting-started/mark-live), and only those. Each card carries the strategy's return over the chosen window, its folder and type, and a small curve.

Above the rail, **Return window** switches the headline figure between **1M**, **YTD** and **1Y**. If no live strategy has a figure for the window you pick, the rail says so and invites you to pick another one rather than showing an empty rail.

The rail stops at eight cards. When you have more than that, it ends with **View all N live strategies**, which opens the full list.

Returns shown here are past results and are not a prediction — see [Is this financial advice?](/docs/investing-theory/is-this-financial-advice).

## Why did a failed strategy disappear from my live book?
Because the rail ranks strategies by their returns, and a strategy whose last run **failed** has no returns to rank. That is intended, and it is not a strategy that has been lost: it moves to **Needs you** above, which is the block that owns what is broken.

That move happens only for a strategy you have [marked Live](/docs/getting-started/mark-live). A failed strategy you never marked Live was never in the rail and does not appear in **Needs you** either — see [Why is a strategy I never marked Live not flagged on Home?](#why-is-a-strategy-i-never-marked-live-not-flagged-on-home) above.

The split is the same across the live half of the page — **Needs you** owns what is wrong, the live book owns what is working. A strategy that merely **needs a re-run** is a different case: it keeps its last known figures and stays in the rail, dimmed.

## Why does the curve not change when I change the return window?
Because the curve is always the one-year series, whatever the **Return window** says. The card labels it **1Y curve** for that reason, and a card with less than a year of history reads **No 1-year curve yet** instead of drawing a shorter one.

**Return window** re-windows the headline percentage only. It is worth knowing before you compare a **1M** figure against the shape of the curve beside it, because those two are measuring different spans on purpose.

## What is in "Recently edited"?
Two columns — **Strategies** and **Screeners** — each listing the five you touched most recently, so you can get back into something you left half-built. This is the one block on Home that reads your **whole** private book: it lists what you edited last whether or not you have [marked it Live](/docs/getting-started/mark-live).

**The Screeners column is the only place in Fincanva that lists your saved screeners.** Nowhere else does. That is why the two columns are not symmetrical: **Strategies** ends with an **All N** link to the full library, and **Screeners** ends with nothing, because opening **Screeners** from the sidebar starts a new screener rather than showing a list of the ones you have.

## What happens when I pick a strategy type from Home?
The strategy is created immediately, before you have configured anything. **New strategy** opens the type tiles, and pressing one creates a real strategy and takes you into its walk.

So there is no draft state to discard: if you change your mind and leave the walk, the strategy stays in **Strategies**, empty. **Deleting it from the Strategies list is how you undo it.** The same is true if you close the dialog while the strategy is being created — Fincanva tells you it was created and leaves you where you are, because by then it exists.

## Why does Home say it is showing only some of my strategies?
Because Home reads a capped slice of your book, most recently updated first, and says so on the date band when you have more live strategies than it read. The strategies it did not read are the ones you have touched least recently. The band counts live strategies, like everything else in the top half — `Showing the 500 most recently updated of your 640 live strategies` — and every count beside it describes what Home read, not necessarily the whole of your live book.

## What does Home show when it cannot reach the engine?
It shows your book as it was last recorded, dated, instead of reporting an all-clear. Where that dating appears depends on which layout the top of Home is in. On the verdict band, the verdict itself reads `Couldn't reach the engine`, with `Couldn't reach the engine — showing results as of {date}.` under it; that verdict outranks both the "showing the most recently updated of N" line and the `N live strategies still computing` line, and it is never the green all-clear. When something needs you, that same `Couldn't reach the engine — showing results as of {date}.` line sits above the **Needs you** list instead, and the **Live book status** tile beside it keeps its counts with `Couldn't reach the engine` next to them, because those are counts of what was last recorded rather than of what is true right now. Each strategy keeps its last recorded [run status](/docs/backtesting/run-status) and figures, dimmed — unless that recording predates the latest market data, in which case the chip reads **Needs re-run** rather than repeating a state that is no longer true.

Two blocks have nothing recorded to fall back on and say so rather than assert an absence. **Next rebalances** has no saved rebalance dates, so it says `Couldn't reach the engine` instead of `No upcoming rebalances`. **Your live book** does the same instead of telling you no live strategy has a figure for the window you picked. Every row in **Needs you** still carries its chip during an outage, because each chip names something you can do to the strategy itself: one you have never run reads **Run**, one whose result is no longer current reads **Re-run**, one whose last run failed reads **Fix**.

Home keeps retrying on its own and stops as soon as the engine answers, so the page recovers without you reloading it.

## What you should see
At the top, either a date band with one true sentence about the strategies you follow live or a **Needs you** list of the ones asking something of you, with tiles beside it that agree with whichever it is; then a rail holding those same strategies ranked, and a **Recently edited** block, reading your whole book, that gets you back to work. If you follow nothing live, **Recently edited** is the whole page. While a backtest is running, Home keeps itself up to date — the verdict and the tiles follow the run without you reloading the page.

For what those figures mean, see [How a backtest works](/docs/backtesting/how-backtesting-works) and [Metrics explained](/docs/analysis/what-every-number-in-performance-metrics-means); for the workflow Home sits at the centre of, see [The Fincanva loop](/docs/getting-started/the-fincanva-loop).