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The Fincanva loop is how every idea moves through the product: you build a strategy, backtest it on real market history and analyze the result. The forward path runs one way, Build → Backtest → Analyze; refining — changing the strategy and running it again — is the only edge that goes back, and it has no screen of its own: it is the same saved strategy, edited and run again.

• Backtest replays the strategy's rules over market history: nothing is traded and nothing is forecast.
• Analyze is a decision point: you read the equity curve, metrics such as CAGR and the max drawdown, then refine or leave the loop; Why a backtest can mislead lists the biases to read a result against.

An idea enters at Build; a strategy leaves when you Mark Live to follow it from today forward, which Unfollow reverses at any time — Live is monitoring only, and nothing is traded. A Combined runs the same three stages one level up, over several strategies. Nothing along the way is a commitment: what you build stays yours to remove, and even account deletion is a scheduled request you can cancel within its 14-day window.

Build is the one stage where a strategy is defined, choosing what it holds included. You set what it may hold (instruments you choose, or a screener that picks them from a universe); how capital is spread (allocation method and rebalance); when it turns defensive (risk conditions that switch it to its Risk-Off allocation); and the take profit and stop loss rules that close positions. Its strategy type — Single instrument, Multiple instruments, Screener or Full setup — decides which of these it requires; the rest stay optional.

You build in Step by step, one chapter at a time with explanations, or in All at once, every card on one page — the same strategy either way; How you build strategies in your preferences decides which view opens. The simulation assumptions — Costs & interests (trading costs and interest), Taxes and Reinvest profits — shape what a run reports, not what the strategy does, and are not set in the editor: you switch them in Simulation assumptions, in the simulation bar at the bottom of the results, and their rates are saved in Settings → Simulation defaults.

Fincanva's market data is refreshed daily, so a backtest runs to the latest available market close: its end date follows the newest data, not today's calendar date. Re-running the same strategy on a later day can produce a different result, simply because there is more history to run over. A strategy you follow Live is re-run for you as new data arrives; one you have only saved reads Needs re-run until you run it again — see run status.