Simulation start year

Also seen as: Starting year

What counts as a good value?

There is no single right start year — it depends on the story you want the backtest to tell. An earlier start includes more market conditions, including sharp declines like 2008, so the metrics reflect how the strategy would have weathered them; a later start focuses on more recent regimes but hides earlier stress. A start year only works if the instruments in the strategy have price data that far back.

How does Fincanva handle it?

• Your plan sets the earliest start year, and Fincanva applies it — 2020 on Free, 2010 on Starter, 2000 on Advanced, no floor on Ultimate and Professional. The start-year calendar greys out every earlier year, a save asking for one is refused, and a strategy that already starts earlier after a plan change is set aside, not moved. See what each plan includes.
• The default start year is 2000, or your plan's floor where that is later.
• On a plan with no floor the calendar reaches from the current year back to 1793, so you can start earlier than 2000 as well as later. What limits a run in practice is price history, not the calendar: a start year only produces results for the years your instruments actually have data for, and almost every instrument's history begins far later than 1793.
• Choosing a later start year shortens the backtest and drops the earlier history from every metric.
• Changing the start year is a settings change, so the backtest recomputes on the next run.

What does it look like in practice?

A strategy is backtested twice with no other change. Starting in 2008 places the opening of the run right at a major market decline, so the early equity curve falls before it recovers and the drawdown and return figures carry that shock. Starting in 2010 begins after the worst of that decline, so the same strategy shows a smoother early curve and different headline metrics. Neither is "more correct" — they answer different questions, which is why the start-date sensitivity view exists.