Rebalance

A strategy targets 60% in a stock ETP and 40% in a bond ETP, rebalancing every month. Over the four weeks after a rebalance the stock sleeve rallies and the bond sleeve is flat, so the split drifts to roughly 63/37 — the portfolio is now carrying more equity risk than intended. On the next monthly rebalance date the strategy sells enough of the stock sleeve and buys enough of the bond sleeve to snap the mix back to 60/40, and the drift-and-correct cycle begins again. Choose a longer cadence — every 6 months — and the weights are allowed to drift much further before they are reset; how far they move is weight drift.

You choose from a fixed set of intervals in the Rebalance every control: 1, 3, 6, 12, 18 or 24 months (the unit shows as "mo"). One month is the most frequent cadence and 24 months the slowest; a 1-month strategy re-checks twelve times a year, a 12-month strategy once a year. You can't enter an arbitrary number, and there is no weekly or daily setting today. One frequency governs the whole strategy; it is not set per instrument.

At each rebalance the strategy rebuilds its target: it re-reads which instruments are in scope, re-applies its allocation method and resets each position to its intended weight. Between two rebalances nothing is bought or sold on the strategy's schedule. Changing the frequency is a settings edit like any other: it applies to your working copy, and you re-run a backtest to see its effect — see Editing a strategy: the settings cards, or Create a strategy to set it on a new one.

The frequency sets how often, across the tested history, the backtest stops to re-check and rebalance the strategy. A shorter interval means more rebalance points over the same period, so the strategy reacts to the market more often; a longer interval means fewer points and a strategy that holds each set of weights for longer. It does not change what a rebalance does at each point — only how many times it happens. See What happens when you run a backtest? for what one backtest computes at each of those points, and Strategy for where the frequency sits among a strategy's parts.

Fincanva does not tell you which rebalance frequency is best for your money — see Is this financial advice?.

The frequency paces some of these rules and not others. Risk conditions are not paced by it: each is measured on the bars of the series it watches, and its Confirmation delay (weeks) ("0 = act immediately.") counts calendar weeks from the flip — see confirmation delay. A condition can carry an Auto-rebalance toggle ("Trigger a rebalance when the condition flips."), marked Triggers rebalance in the list, which makes a flip force an extra rebalance at once instead of waiting for the next scheduled one. Take profit and stop loss are not paced by it either: each position is checked on its own price bars, so either exit can close it between two rebalances — see execution time for the price that close books at. Max hold is paced by it: it acts only at scheduled rebalances, which is why it and reinvest delay must be whole multiples of the frequency — see max hold months. An off-schedule rebalance forced by a flip is not one of those scheduled rebalances: max hold and the Exclude-screener exit do not act on it.