The data frontier is the most recent market date Fincanva has price data for, and it is where every backtest ends — not at today's date. On an ordinary weekday that is yesterday's close; on a Monday, the previous Friday's. Data freshness is the matching question about a result: whether it was computed against the current frontier or an older one.
Also seen as: data frontier, "data as of"
How does Fincanva handle it?
- Every backtest and every screener run uses the frontier as its end date — the wall-clock date is never used. The frontier is the upper edge of every instrument's coverage window.
- Market data is refreshed daily; while a refresh is in progress the simulation engine reports "Engine updating data" and already-computed results stay visible.
- A frontier that has moved invalidates results computed against the previous one, which is what the daily warm recomputes for the strategies you follow Live.
- No result ever mixes two frontiers (shared compute): a backtest is entirely on one side of a refresh or the other.
What does it look like in practice?
On Tuesday evening a strategy shows Up to date, a total return computed to Monday's close, and a Compute time from that backtest. Overnight, Tuesday's market data is loaded and the frontier advances from Monday to Tuesday. On Wednesday morning you open the same strategy without editing anything: the saved result was computed to Monday, the current frontier is Tuesday, so the result is no longer current — the status reads Needs re-run, and a re-run settles it back to Up to date with one more trading day included. The total return has moved slightly, and so has every metric that ends at the frontier. Open it again on Wednesday afternoon and nothing changes: the frontier is still Tuesday, because Wednesday's close has not been published yet.
Why does my backtest end yesterday and not today?
Because today's close does not exist yet. A backtest ends at the frontier — the last trading day whose data has actually landed, since prices arrive as one bar per trading day — so one you start on Wednesday morning ends at Tuesday's close, and one you start on Monday ends at Friday's. Nothing is truncated by this: the replay covers everything from your start year up to the frontier, and every figure on the results page ends on that same date, including the month-to-date and year-to-date windows. Intraday prices are not part of the model at all — the smallest step Fincanva works in is one trading day.
Why do my numbers change when I did not touch anything?
Because the frontier moved. When new market data is loaded, the frontier advances by a trading day and every result computed against the old frontier is no longer current — so the same strategy, unedited, recomputes and comes back with one more day of history and slightly different figures. That is why a strategy can read Up to date in the evening and, without you touching it, read Needs re-run or Computing the next morning before settling back (see run status). Day-to-day drift of this kind is expected behaviour, not a defect. It is also distinct from plan compliance: "up to date" is about the data, "compliant" is about what your account is allowed to run.
Used in 12 pages
- What Fincanva's data coverage figures count · Data & methodology
- What data your backtests run on · Data & methodology
- Compute time
- Coverage window
- Daily warm of Live strategies
- Final value
- Market-day and trading-calendar alignment
- Plan compliance
- Run status
- Screener execution and caching
- Shared compute
- Special data series