Set your simulation defaults
Your starting capital, base currency, tax rules and interest markups are set once, in Settings → Simulation defaults, and every run of your own strategies starts from them.
Steps
- Open Simulation in the sidebar, under Other — or Settings in the account menu, then Simulation defaults.
- Read the Next simulation summary at the top: one sentence with the capital, the currency and how the run will be taxed, beside the rates it uses. It follows your edits as you make them, before you save.
- Under Parameters, pick a Starting capital from the list and a Base currency. Each choice is saved the moment you make it, and a toast confirms it:
Starting capital saved,Currency saved. - Under Fiscal profile, choose your Tax residency and adjust the rates it starts you on, then press Save — Set the tax rules your backtests use walks through this section.
- Under Interest, set the Borrowing rate markup and the Short rate markup — the spreads a run adds to the reference rate when it borrows capital or shorts — then press Save. The toast reads
Interest rates saved. - Run your strategies on the new values. A change here leaves each of your strategies at Needs re-run until it runs again — press Re-run on it; a strategy you follow Live is recomputed for you.
Done. The Next simulation summary states what your next run assumes, and every strategy you own runs on it from its next run onwards.
Which strategies do the simulation defaults apply to?
Every strategy you own — the ones you already created included, not only new ones. Each section carries the badge Your strategies to say so, and the summary ends with "It also applies to strategies you already created." A strategy does not keep a capital, currency or tax rule of its own: every simulation of it reads your saved defaults when it runs, which is why a change here sends your strategies to — why a change flips the status.
A Public strategy you do not own is the exception: it always runs on Fincanva's defaults rather than yours, so every viewer sees the same figures — see starting capital and base currency.
What do the simulation defaults start at?
Until you save values of your own, the page shows Fincanva's:
- Starting capital 100,000, chosen from ten fixed amounts between 10,000 and 10,000,000;
- Base currency USD, one of six: USD, EUR, GBP, CHF, CAD and AUD;
- Tax residency following your interface language — United States in English, Italy in Italian — with the rates that residency starts on;
- Borrowing rate markup 1.5% and Short rate markup 2%, each settable up to 10%.
Why do some changes save at once and others need Save?
Parameters are single choices, so each is saved as you make it. Fiscal profile and Interest are groups whose values only make sense together — a residency with the rates it re-seeds — so they are saved whole. While a group has a change, a bar in its section counts them, such as 2 unsaved changes, with Save and Cancel; each changed field is marked until you save. Cancel puts back what was saved. Leaving the page with a change still pending asks Discard changes? first.
The interest markups and the tax rates reach a result only when the strategy's simulation assumptions include them: Costs & interests for the markups, Taxes for the tax rules.
UPDATED 2026-10-07REVIEWED 2026-10-07