Matches are the instruments in a screener's universe that pass every one of its filters at once, shown as a live count that updates as you add, edit, or remove filters. The count sits at the right end of the screener's action row, labelled Matches; when no instrument passes, its badge turns red (destructive style), signalling the screener has nothing to act on. Because filters combine with AND, an instrument has to clear all of them to be counted.
Also seen as: match count
How the match count changes as you add filters
Every filter narrows the pool: a screener starts from its universe and keeps only the instruments that satisfy all of its filters together. Adding a filter can lower the count or leave it unchanged, but never raise it; removing or loosening a filter can only raise it. This is why a screen with more filters usually shows fewer matches — each condition is one more test an instrument must pass. Where a Highest or Lowest filter sits in that chain also matters, because it ranks only the instruments still passing at its own position — see sequential filtering and Top-N ranking.
What a zero count means
A zero count means no instrument in the universe passes all the filters together, and the Matches badge on the action row turns red to flag it. It usually points to filters that are too tight or that contradict each other rather than to an error. Widen a range, remove a filter, or broaden the universe to bring instruments back into the set.
How does Fincanva handle it?
- The match count is the single count surface — it appears next to the word Matches at the right end of the screener's action row (the row of buttons under the tab bar), and updates live as you edit filters. The Matches · Backtest selector itself sits below that row, in a band together with the filter chips, and no longer carries the count.
- At zero it switches to the destructive (red) badge style; above zero it shows as a plain count.
- Before a screener has run, the count can read "Run to see matches" instead of a number.
- The set of matches is what a backtest or an attached strategy draws from. It is not the same as what a strategy ends up holding: a simulation trims the candidate list with the max-symbols cap and then holds only as many as Max positions allows.
What does it look like in practice?
A screener over US stocks starts from its whole universe. You add a first filter, P/E < 20, and the count drops to, say, 620 matches; a second, Sector = Technology, brings it to 90; a third, Market cap > $10B, leaves 47. The readout now shows "47 matches" — the 47 instruments that satisfy all three filters at once. Remove the sector filter and the count rises again, because fewer conditions have to be met.