---
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/glossary/contracts"
last_updated: "2026-10-06"
md_url: "https://fincanva.com/glossary/contracts.md"
---

# Contracts

Contracts is the quantity of an [instrument](/glossary/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.

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

where:

- 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](/glossary/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](/glossary/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.

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)