---
title: "Capital"
description: "Capital is the amount you enter on a strategy's Holdings view so Fincanva can size its target orders; it rescales every money figure but no weight."
canonical_url: "https://fincanva.com/docs/portfolio-holdings/capital"
last_updated: "2026-09-11"
md_url: "https://fincanva.com/docs/portfolio-holdings/capital.md"
---

# Capital

Capital is the amount of money you enter on a strategy's [Holdings](/docs/getting-started/holdings) view so Fincanva can size that strategy's target orders. It is a view input rather than a strategy setting: change it and every money figure on the page — the target notional, each holding's target value, the deployed amount, and the share quantities — is rebuilt for the new amount, while the target weights stay exactly as they were. It is a different thing from [starting capital](/docs/backtesting/starting-capital), which is a backtest input belonging to the strategy itself.

## What does changing Capital do?

Changing Capital re-sizes the order plan and nothing else. The strategy's rules, its allocation, and its saved backtest results are untouched; what changes is how much money those weights are applied to. Because weights are ratios, doubling the capital doubles every [target notional](/docs/portfolio-holdings/target-notional) and roughly doubles every share count — it never changes *what* the strategy wants to hold, only how much of it. The page re-requests its figures at the new amount, dimming briefly while they are rebuilt.

## How is Capital different from starting capital?

Capital sizes today's target orders; [starting capital](/docs/backtesting/starting-capital) sizes the historical simulation. Starting capital is the amount a [backtest](/docs/getting-started/backtest) begins with at the start of the simulated period and then compounds forward, so it lives in the strategy's settings and changing it flips the last run to **Needs re-run**. Capital on the Holdings view answers "what would this portfolio look like at this much money, right now" — it re-runs nothing, and it is not saved with the strategy.

## Defaults in Fincanva

- The field is labelled `Capital`, prefixed with your [base currency](/docs/backtesting/base-currency)'s symbol, and opens at 100,000.
- The amount is a view parameter: it is not stored with the strategy and does not trigger a new backtest.
- While the page is refreshing the field is disabled; if the refresh fails, the field reverts to the last working amount and the page shows `Couldn't update — reverted to the last result.`
- A larger capital usually raises [accuracy](/docs/portfolio-holdings/accuracy).
- [Cash % and capital invested](/docs/portfolio-holdings/cash-and-capital-invested) are percentages of whatever Capital you set, so scaling the amount moves the money behind them far more than it moves the split itself.
- These are paper figures. Fincanva monitors a live-followed strategy without trading, so no [order plan](/docs/portfolio-holdings/order-plan) it produces ever reaches a broker (see [Portfolio](/docs/getting-started/portfolio)).

## Worked example

A target portfolio holds four instruments at weights of 40%, 30%, 20%, and 10%. With Capital at 100,000 their target values are 40,000 / 30,000 / 20,000 / 10,000. Type 25,000 instead and the weights do not move, but every target value scales to a quarter — 10,000 / 7,500 / 5,000 / 2,500 — and each share count is recomputed at the instrument's own price. The strategy is unchanged; you have only asked what the same portfolio looks like on a quarter of the money. Accuracy typically dips a little at the smaller figure, because one unbuyable fraction of a share now weighs more against a smaller book.

*Capital only rescales the target figures this page displays. It is not a suggested amount to invest, and Fincanva does not recommend how much money to put behind any strategy. Fincanva provides no financial advice — see [Is this financial advice?](/docs/investing-theory/is-this-financial-advice).*