Mark Live

Also seen as: Go live · Live (the on state) · Unfollow and Stop following (the reverse)

Does marking a strategy Live trade anything?

No. Marking a strategy Live places no orders and moves no money. Fincanva has no broker connection at all — there is nothing for an order to be sent to. Going Live starts paper monitoring: the app follows the positions the strategy's rules imply and shows how that paper book would have performed, exactly as a backtest does, but continuing forward from today instead of stopping at the end of history.

The one place this can read like real trading is the order plan, which lists what the strategy would buy, sell, and resize at its next rebalance. That list is a plan on paper — Fincanva does not act on it, and you would have to place any of those trades yourself, with your own broker, entirely at your own discretion.

Following a strategy Live is not a prediction and not a recommendation. Fincanva provides no financial advice — see Is this financial advice?.

What changes when a strategy is Live?

Four things change, and none of them touch money:

• It appears in Portfolios. The confirm dialog states it plainly: "It'll show in Portfolios and count toward your dashboard."
• Its results are kept current automatically. Live strategies are refreshed for you as new market data arrives; a strategy that is not Live only recomputes when you press Run or Re-run. See Run status for the states you will see.
• It is starred automatically, and the star locks. Going Live adds the strategy to your favourites and keeps it there while it stays Live — trying to unstar it shows "Turn the strategy off first". Starring strategies and screeners covers the star, the lock, and the favourites cap.
• It counts toward your dashboard, where its own numbers feed the whole-book summary.

Editing a Live strategy does not silently re-run it: an edited strategy waits for you to run it explicitly, so a change you make never triggers a backtest by itself.

Who chooses which strategies keep being followed?

You do. When your plan stops covering the strategies you follow Live, Fincanva asks you which ones keep being followed before it stops any of them — it does not decide that for you any more. The question arrives as a dialog on the Portfolios page and when you open a strategy you follow Live, and it is blocking: it has no close button, Escape and a click outside do nothing, and the only way past it is an answer.

The dialog names the numbers and lists every strategy you follow, each with how long you have been following it where Fincanva has that date. On Starter, following three, its title reads "Choose the strategy to keep live" and under it "You follow 3 live strategies, Starter covers 1. Choose which one to keep." Where the plan covers one, the rows are radio buttons; above one they are checkboxes with a counter reading "2 of 5 chosen". Confirm commits, and it stays disabled until you have chosen exactly the number the plan covers — not at most that number, exactly it. Once you reach it the remaining rows lock and dim: to pick a different one, untick one you picked.

Where Confirm leaves you depends on where you answered. On the Portfolios page you stay there. Inside a strategy, you stay on it if it is one you kept; if it is not, Fincanva takes you to the Portfolios page, because the strategy you were looking at has just stopped being followed. The same holds on a cancelled subscription, where nothing is kept.

Fincanva's own order arrives pre-selected, and the dialog states in words what applies if you choose nothing: "If you choose nothing we keep Momentum EU, the last one you used." Most recently used is the order for the Live ceiling, and only for it: which strategies your library keeps active is a separate question, answered on plan compliance. Under it the dialog says what the choice costs: the ones you leave out stop being followed — no live updates and no live signals — and stay in your library, ready to go live again when your plan covers them.

You are asked once, and the question cannot be reopened. It is owed at the moment your plan stops covering your live book, and your answer puts the account back inside what the plan covers; from then on Fincanva refuses any attempt to answer it again, so there is no screen, no menu entry and no link that reopens it. You meet it a second time only if a later plan change stops covering your live book again, and that is a fresh question about the strategies you follow then.

If the question moves under you while the dialog is open, your answer is refused rather than applied — and Fincanva says which case it was. Answer in a second tab after the first has already been saved and you are told "Your choice was already saved, in another tab. This is where you stand now."; answer a question your plan has changed in the meantime and you are told "Your plan changed while this was open, so the question changed too. Here it is as it stands now." Neither is a failure and neither loses anything of yours — the dialog re-reads the server, and either shows you the question as it now stands or closes because your account is covered.

A cancelled subscription is the same moment in a different shape. Your plan then covers no Live strategies at all, so there is nothing to choose between and the dialog states what is happening instead of offering a choice. It reads "Your subscription has ended", then "The 3 strategies you were following stop." It lists them, each marked STOPPED, and closes with "They all stay in your library, with their history: they go live again as soon as you take a plan. There is nothing to redo." There are no controls and no counter — only See the plans, and Got it to acknowledge.

What happens when your plan stops covering a Live strategy?

Following stops and the strategy is set aside — not deleted, not edited, not hidden. It keeps its place in your library and its settings stay editable; what it loses is the following, and the results that came with it. Two different shortages stop a following, and only one of them is yours to decide. When your plan covers fewer Live strategies than you follow, you choose which ones keep being followed, in a dialog Fincanva puts in front of you at the Portfolios page or when you open a Live strategy. When a strategy instead falls outside what your plan keeps active in your library, it is set aside and its following stops as a consequence: that set is decided for you, once, at the moment the plan stops covering your library, and the strategies you follow Live rank ahead of every other, so one of them is set aside that way only when you follow more than your plan keeps active.

The two can meet on one screen. A strategy that is already set aside is still listed when the Live question is asked, marked SET ASIDE and with no control beside it: its following stops whatever you answer, so it is not one of the strategies you are choosing between. The dialog says so under the list — "One of these is set aside, so it stops being followed whatever you choose." — and the number you are asked to keep is spent on the strategies that can actually keep being followed. If setting them aside already leaves your live book inside what the plan covers, no question is asked at all.

Fincanva does not mark the interruption anywhere. There is no line on the row saying when following stopped, no dated record of the stretch it was off, and no separate control for starting again. A set-aside strategy's row carries a lock before its name and shows its Live switch off and dimmed, and clicking that switch opens Your plan is full instead of toggling — an account cannot follow more strategies than its plan keeps active.

Starting again therefore means bringing the strategy back inside the plan, and there are only two routes: a plan that covers what you hold, or — if you deleted an active strategy and a seat is genuinely vacant — Activate this one on that strategy's own panel. There is no free way to re-choose which strategies your library keeps active: that verdict is settled once, and it is discarded only when your plan covers your whole library again. The Live ceiling's one-time question is a different question, and answering it does not move the library verdict. Plan compliance covers the two reasons a strategy ends up outside a plan and how each clears.

A strategy followed again after months is not the same as one followed throughout, and nothing in the app will tell you so. Months of rebalances never happened: its current positions are what its rules imply today, not what someone following it throughout would be holding, and the order plan it now shows is the move from those positions rather than from theirs. Reading it as an unbroken Live track would overstate what it is — and because the interruption is not recorded, keeping track of it is yours.

Defaults in Fincanva

• How many strategies you may follow Live is set by your plan: none at all on Free, 1 on Starter, 5 on Advanced, and no limit on Ultimate and Professional. See what each plan includes.
• Only your own strategies can be marked Live — a Public strategy has no Live control, because it is not yours to follow.
• Both directions ask for confirmation. Going Live asks "Mark this strategy as Live?" and commits with Mark as Live; turning it off asks "Stop following this strategy?" and commits with Stop following.
• There are two ways in: the Live / Off switch on the strategy itself (labelled Go live while off), and Mark Live in the strategy's row menu, which reads Unfollow once the strategy is live.
• A copy is never followed automatically: Duplicate and Copy to Mine both produce a strategy whose Live switch starts Off.
• Unfollowing changes nothing about the strategy itself — it leaves Portfolios, stops counting toward your dashboard, and can be marked Live again later.

Worked example

You have backtested a strategy and want to watch how it behaves from here. You open it and flip the Off switch; a dialog asks "Mark this strategy as Live?" and you confirm with Mark as Live. The switch turns green and reads Live, the strategy appears on the Portfolios page, its star turns gold and locks, and Fincanva starts keeping its numbers current as new market days arrive.

No broker was connected and no trade was sent. Two months later you decide to stop: you flip the switch back, confirm "Stop following this strategy?" with Stop following, and the strategy leaves Portfolios. Its star unlocks, its saved settings and its whole backtest history are untouched, and you can mark it Live again whenever you want.