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.
- the quantity the position holds at time t
Max contracts is the peak of the held quantity over the position's life.
How does Fincanva handle it?
- Contracts appears per trade in the Executions 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.
- It is distinct from max positions, which caps how many different instruments are held at once, not the quantity of any single one.
What does it look like in practice?
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.
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.