---
title: "Contracts"
description: "Contracts is the quantity of an instrument a position holds — its units, shares, or contracts — and Max contracts is the peak quantity it held."
canonical_url: "https://fincanva.com/docs/strategies/contracts"
last_updated: "2026-07-24"
md_url: "https://fincanva.com/docs/strategies/contracts.md"
---

# Contracts

Contracts is the quantity of an instrument a position holds — its number of units, shares, or contracts — and **Max contracts** is the largest quantity that position held at any point in its life. It is a count of how much is held, not the money value of the holding.

**Also seen as:** units, shares, quantity.

## What do Contracts and Max contracts measure?

Contracts is a count of how much of one instrument is held: a position of 10 shares holds 10 contracts, regardless of the price. Max contracts is the peak of that count over the position's life — if a position was built up to 15 shares and later trimmed to 8, its Max contracts is 15:

$$
\text{Max contracts} = \max_t q_t
$$

where $q_t$ is the quantity held at time $t$.

## Defaults in Fincanva

- Contracts appears per trade in the **Trade history** table (Italian "Contratti"); Max contracts appears per position in the **Positions** table (Italian "Contratti max").
- The value is a count of units, shares, or contracts — distinct from the position's money value in the "Gross" and "Net" columns.
- Distinct from **Max positions**, which caps how many different instruments are held at once, not the quantity of any single one.

## Worked example

A position opens with 10 shares. A later rebalance adds 5, taking it to 15, and a partial exit then sells 7, leaving 8. Its Contracts change trade by trade — 10, then 15, then 8 — while Max contracts records the high-water mark of 15, the most it ever held.

*A quantity records what a simulation held on historical data, never a real order, and it is not a position size to take in any instrument. Fincanva provides no financial advice — see [Is this financial advice?](/docs/investing-theory/is-this-financial-advice).*