---
title: "Follow a strategy live"
description: "Mark a strategy Live to follow it forward as a portfolio: the Live switch, the confirm dialog, what changes afterwards, and how to stop following it."
canonical_url: "https://fincanva.com/docs/portfolio-holdings/follow-a-strategy-live"
last_updated: "2026-09-04"
md_url: "https://fincanva.com/docs/portfolio-holdings/follow-a-strategy-live.md"
---

# Follow a strategy live

You follow a strategy by marking it **Live**, which starts tracking what its rules would hold from today forward and lists it on the **Portfolios** page.

↗ See this in Fincanva — the Portfolios page

## Before you start
You need one of your own strategies — a Public strategy has no Live control, because it is not yours to follow. There is no separate "create a portfolio" step: a portfolio *is* a strategy you have marked Live, which is why **Portfolios** and **Strategies** show the same rows filtered differently.

**Live is monitoring only.** Fincanva places no orders, connects to no broker, and moves no money — see [Mark Live](/docs/getting-started/mark-live#does-marking-a-strategy-live-trade-anything).

## Steps
1. Open the strategy, or find its row on **Strategies**.
2. Flip the switch in the strategy's title cluster — it reads **Off** until you do — or select **Mark Live** in the row's menu.
3. Read the confirmation. It asks "Mark this strategy as Live?" and states what follows: "It'll show in Portfolios and count toward your dashboard."
4. Confirm with **Mark as Live**. **Cancel** backs out and changes nothing.

## What you should see
The switch turns and reads **Live**, and the strategy appears on the **Portfolios** page as one row of your [live book](/docs/getting-started/live-book). Its star turns on and locks while it stays Live, its numbers start being kept current for you as new market data arrives, and it begins counting toward the summary strip at the top of the page. Reading what it now holds is [Read your order plan](/docs/portfolio-holdings/read-your-order-plan); keeping the whole book healthy is [Keep your live book in order](/docs/portfolio-holdings/keep-your-live-book-in-order).

Marking a strategy Live is not a prediction that it will perform, and Fincanva never suggests which strategy to follow — see [Is this financial advice?](/docs/investing-theory/is-this-financial-advice#is-this-financial-advice).

## What changes once a strategy is Live?
Four things, and none of them involve money — [Mark Live](/docs/getting-started/mark-live#what-changes-when-a-strategy-is-live) lists them. The one that surprises people is what does *not* change: editing a Live strategy does not re-run it by itself, so an edited strategy sits with a stale result until you run it, exactly as it would if it were not Live.

## How do I stop following a strategy?
Flip the same switch back, or select **Unfollow** in the row menu. Fincanva asks "Stop following this strategy?" and tells you what that costs — "It'll leave Portfolios and stop counting toward your dashboard." — and commits with **Stop following**. Nothing about the strategy itself changes: its settings and its whole backtest history are untouched, its star unlocks, and you can mark it Live again whenever you want.

## Common problems
### The strategy I want to follow has no Live switch
It is a Public strategy, which cannot be followed because it is not yours. Make your own copy first with **Copy to Mine**, then mark the copy Live. A copy never starts Live: **Duplicate** and **Copy to Mine** both produce a strategy whose switch starts **Off**.

### A toast says "Couldn't update Live status. Try again."
The change did not go through, so the strategy is still in whatever state it was before. Nothing is half-applied — try the switch again.

### The switch is refused with a message naming your plan
This is not the generic toast above — it is your plan talking. Your account is already at the number of strategies your plan follows Live, so this one has nowhere to go: the refusal states the plan and how many it allows, and offers the step that would raise the number, named on its own button rather than a generic "Upgrade". This is the [plan compliance](/docs/backtesting/plan-compliance) check, and it answers the same way whether you flip the switch in the strategy's title cluster or pick **Mark Live** from the row's menu on **Strategies**.

### I marked a strategy Live but Portfolios shows nothing to act on
That is the healthy state, not a fault. Until the strategy has a completed run there is no target book to show, and the Holdings view says so directly: "Backtest this strategy to see its target portfolio."