Asset-selection modes

Also seen as: Easy and Pro, Build a screen

What do Basket, Screen, and Compose do?

Each mode answers "what may this strategy hold?" a different way.

An empty Basket with no entry screener buys nothing: with nothing named and nothing to choose by rule, the strategy has no candidate, the instrument list says No instruments, and the backtest does not start. With an entry screener an empty basket is a real state — the screener searches its own whole universe — and the list says All instruments.

How do Easy and Pro relate to the three modes?

Easy and Pro are the two screening modes the three asset-selection modes are built on, and they are underlying state rather than a control you operate: no surface shows an Easy/Pro toggle. The mapping is exact: Basket is Easy applied to instruments you name, Screen is Easy applied to a screener, and Compose is Pro. That is why Pro-only settings survive a trip through Easy — they belong to the same strategy, just to controls Easy does not show, and it is why the confirmation you get when leaving Compose still names both. Step by step and All at once present these three states the same way, as one Basket · Screen · Compose control — and only on a Full setup strategy, as the next section explains.

Which modes does each strategy type offer?

The card only offers the modes the strategy type supports — there is no greyed-out placeholder for one it does not.

The strategy type is a constraint on the card, not a starting preset: three of the four types have exactly one mode, so for them the Basket · Screen · Compose control is not shown at all — there is nothing to switch between. Only Full setup shows it, in Step by step exactly as in All at once. Compose is therefore reachable from Full setup alone, and with it the Qualify and Reject screener pools; a Screener strategy that needs a rejecting pool becomes a Full setup one.

Two consequences follow inside Basket. On Single instrument the mode is a single slot with a Change affordance rather than a list you add to — picking another instrument replaces the one held instead of extending a basket. And the Basket's Filters strip exists only under Full setup; on the two instrument types the mode names instruments and nothing else.

Changing type is not how an existing strategy loses a mode. A saved strategy whose content needs a wider surface than its type offers — instruments and a screener together, a second qualifying screener, a rejecting pool — is read as the wider type instead, so the card can still show everything the strategy holds. Nothing is trimmed to fit, and the widening never runs the other way: a Full setup strategy holding a single instrument stays Full setup.

What is the working scope in Compose?

In Compose the basket is the working scope — the set of instruments the attached screeners are evaluated against. With instruments in the basket the screeners are evaluated against those instruments alone; with an empty basket each screener searches its own whole universe. This is the one mode where naming instruments and screening by rule are not alternatives: the basket bounds the search, and the screener pools decide who inside it is held.

Compose also groups the strategy's Selection rules beside the pools — Max positions, the cap on how many instruments are held at once; Max hold, how long a position may be held; and Reinvest delay, how long an instrument stays out of the strategy's choices after its position closes.

How does Fincanva handle it?

• The card prints no count or readout beside its title. An empty basket is said by the list's own line — All instruments with an entry screener, No instruments without one — and the body shows the same sections in every mode — Assets (called Universe in Screen), Filters and Selection rules — each only where the mode has it.
• On the Free plan, which includes no screeners inside strategies, Screen and Compose stay visible with the plan's bars after their names; choosing one opens it as a switched-off preview instead of switching, and pressing its bars opens the plan dialog, and the Basket's Filters are hidden unless the strategy already holds a screener — see screener attach.
• Switching mode is non-destructive until you save. What the new mode does not use leaves the strategy at the switch, and comes back if you switch back before saving. Mode switching applies to Full setup, the only type that offers more than one mode.
• Switching to Screen sets aside the instruments you picked, together with an allocation built on them: Fixed weights, which cannot run on a universe a screener alone chooses, and a Mimicking or Beta neutral reference that was one of your picked instruments. Each is replaced by the method a new Screen strategy starts with. Max positions on Screen is the value you last gave it on Screen or in Compose — never the basket's count; a strategy that has only been on Basket since you opened it starts Screen from the default Max positions.
• Switching to Basket sets aside a screener the Basket cannot show: one without filter rows, and any beyond the one the Filters strip shows.
• Changing the strategy type sets settings aside the same way, at the switch, and changing back before saving restores them; the type-change dialog counts what the save will not carry.
• Saving, discarding your changes, or opening another strategy ends this: whatever is set aside and not back in the strategy is not saved. Until then, the alerts, notes and cards always describe exactly what the save will send.
• The screener Screen shows is the one the strategy holds. Arriving on Screen — switching to it, changing the type to Screener, or creating a Screener strategy — gives the strategy the screener the card displays: the default universe, with no filters of your own yet, so what you see is what runs. Leave Screen before changing that screener and it goes with you: the strategy is back to exactly what it held. Once you edit it — a filter, the universe, a screener from your library — it is yours and stays. Removing an attached screener on Screen puts that default back, and opening a stored Screener strategy that has no screener shows it holding that default as an unsaved change: Save is offered, and until you save, the backtest is judged on the strategy as stored. On a plan that includes no screeners inside strategies, nothing is added.
• On Basket the strategy holds what you picked: Max positions follows the number of instruments in the basket, updated with every pick and removal, rather than left as a control, so nothing you named is dropped for being over a cap. It stays a control on Screen and in Compose. A basket over the most your plan holds in one strategy is kept whole and raises a blocking alert instead.
• Leaving Compose can leave settings that Basket and Screen have no control for. Fincanva confirms first and keeps them for a return to Compose, and the confirmation names the underlying screening modes rather than the three: "Easy mode hides these Pro settings. They're kept and restored if you switch back to Pro:" — and it lists them: the extra qualifying screeners beyond the first, any rejecting screeners, custom hold and reinvest-delay timings, and the universe filters on the screener it keeps.
• The strategy needs at least one instrument or one attached screener before it can be saved and run, whichever mode it is in.

What does it look like in practice?

Take the same ten US large caps and build the same idea three ways.

• Basket — you add all ten by name. The strategy's universe is exactly those ten, every rebalance, whatever the market does.
• Screen — you name nothing and instead write one screener whose filters describe the ten. The strategy holds whatever matches at each rebalance: nine of them one quarter, thirteen names the next, because membership is recomputed rather than fixed.
• Compose — you put the ten in the basket and attach one screener to Qualify. The candidate set never grows beyond your ten, but only the ones that qualify at that rebalance are held — six of ten in a quiet quarter, all ten in a strong one.

Same idea, three different answers to "what may this hold?": a fixed list, an open rule, and a rule applied inside a fixed list.