Reading the monthly returns heatmap

↗See this in Fincanva — a strategy's Analysis, under Monthly Returns

Steps

1. Open Monthly Returns. Open your strategy, go to Analysis and select Monthly Returns. The grid, titled Monthly returns, fills in once the strategy has a completed backtest; four figures above it — Avg month, Best month, Worst month and Positive months — cover the whole period.
2. Read a year across, or a month down. Each row is a Year and each cell that month's return, printed in the cell and shaded green or red by its size; the newest year is on top. Select a column heading to sort the years by it — what the shading means is on months matrix.
3. Select a year. Click its row or the year itself: the three panels above the grid — Equity, Drawdown and Monthly returns — show that year alone. The most recent year is selected when the page opens.
4. Compare with the benchmark. Switch on vs. Benchmark to turn the month cells and Total into your return minus the benchmark's, in percentage points (excess return); DD and NP/DD stay the strategy's own.
5. Set what the figures include. Switch Costs & interests, Taxes or Reinvest profits in Simulation assumptions.

Done. You can read when the result happened — which months carried a year and which gave it back — against the benchmark when you want it.

What do the Total, DD, and NP/DD columns mean?

Three columns on the right summarise each year.

• Total is the total return for the year.
• DD is that year's maximum drawdown.
• NP/DD is net profit divided by maximum drawdown. It is a plain, public ratio, the same figure the metrics table calls the return-to-drawdown ratio. See return-to-drawdown ratio.

How do the Costs, Taxes, and Reinvest toggles change the numbers?

Three toggles under Simulation assumptions — Costs & interests, Taxes, and Reinvest profits — decide what the figures include. By default Costs & interests is off, Taxes is off, and Reinvest profits is on. Turning one on or off switches the whole page to a version Fincanva pre-computed when the backtest ran; the page reads the matching set of results rather than recalculating on the spot, so the change is immediate. The current-state view of live holdings ignores these toggles — it always shows reinvested figures with costs and taxes off.

Why is the heatmap empty?

The grid needs a completed backtest with monthly results, and with none it reads "No monthly data for this run." Run the strategy first; a strategy that has never been simulated has no monthly series to plot.