---
title: "Capital"
description: "Capital is the amount you enter on a strategy's Positions view so Fincanva can size its target orders; it rescales every money figure but no weight."
canonical_url: "https://fincanva.com/glossary/capital"
last_updated: "2026-09-28"
md_url: "https://fincanva.com/glossary/capital.md"
---

# Capital

Capital is the amount of money you enter on a [strategy](/glossary/strategy)'s [Positions](/glossary/positions) 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](/glossary/starting-capital), which is a backtest input belonging to the strategy itself.

**Also seen as:** investment amount, account size

## 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](/glossary/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](/glossary/starting-capital) sizes the historical simulation. Starting capital is the amount a [backtest](/glossary/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 Positions 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.

## How does Fincanva handle it?

- The field is labelled `Capital`, prefixed with your [base currency](/glossary/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](/glossary/accuracy).
- [Cash % and capital invested](/glossary/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](/glossary/order-plan) it produces ever reaches a broker (see [Portfolio](/glossary/portfolio)).

## What does it look like in practice?

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](/glossary/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 is for education and illustration only. It is not personalised financial advice, and past or simulated results do not predict future ones. [Read the Terms Addendum](https://fincanva.com/terms/addendum#section-3)