Cash % and capital invested

Also seen as: idle cash, uninvested capital

How are Cash % and capital invested calculated?

Both come from one sum: add up what every target position is meant to be worth, express it as a share of your capital, and whatever is missing is cash.

where $\text{target value}_i$ is holding i's target notional in your base currency, capital is the amount entered on the Holdings view, and both results are percentages.

Note which figure that sum uses: the target value, before each position is rounded to whole shares. The extra sliver left over by rounding is measured separately, by target vs deployed and accuracy — it is not part of Cash %.

Why do the allocation weights and the Cash % seem to disagree?

Because the two are normalised against different totals, and that is the single most confusing thing on the page.

• Shares of a strategy's own slice. A strategy's allocation weights divide up whatever that strategy was given. They add to 100% of its slice no matter how much of the slice it actually deploys.
• Shares of your whole capital. Cash %, capital invested, and every tile in the target allocation treemap are expressed against the capital you entered, so cash shows up as a visible remainder.

So a strategy whose asset weights read 60/40 can still leave a quarter of its slice in cash: the 60/40 describes how the invested part is divided, not how much is invested. Read the weights when you want the mix; read Cash % when you want to know how much of the money is at work. For the same split across a whole backtest rather than at one date, see the capital chart.

What leaves capital in cash?

Two settings put capital in cash rather than into positions, and they stack:

• Leverage below 1. Leverage is a multiplier on position sizes — 1.00 = no leverage, with a range of 0.00 – 2.00 and presets from Cash only to Max. At 0.50 a strategy targets half the money it was allocated and the other half sits idle. This is the case that surprises people, because the asset weights still read as a full 100% split of the invested part.
• A deliberate cash reserve. A Combined's Invested portion setting — Share of capital this profile deploys — holds back a slice on purpose.

Leverage above 1.00 works the other way: target positions can exceed your capital, and Cash % goes to zero.

Defaults in Fincanva

• Cash is a percentage KPI at the top of the Holdings view; capital invested is the large percentage on the Target allocation card, captioned capital invested, and also appears as a muted Cash tile inside the treemap.
• Both are read for the rebalance date selected on the page and the capital entered there — change either and both recompute.
• Cash is capital the plan does not deploy, not a holding you can size or a position you can see in the table.
• If the strategy's last run is out of date, these figures come from that older run; the Portfolios page flags such a portfolio under To update.
• Nothing is traded. This is the split of a paper portfolio Fincanva monitors, never an instruction to move money (see Portfolio).

Worked example

A portfolio shows 92% capital invested with Cash 8%, on 100,000 of capital: 92,000 is targeted by positions and 8,000 is not. The cause is the strategy's Leverage setting of 0.92 — it deliberately targets 92% of what it was given.

Now decode the allocation beside it. The strategy's four holdings carry weights of 40 / 30 / 20 / 10 within its own slice, so their target values are 36,800 / 27,600 / 18,400 / 9,200 — 40% of 92,000, and so on. The treemap tiles read 36.8%, 27.6%, 18.4%, 9.2% and a muted Cash 8%, because tiles are shares of your capital and must total 100%. Both readings are correct at the same time: 40% of the strategy's slice is 36.8% of your capital. Set Leverage to 1.00 and Cash drops to 0% while the 40 / 30 / 20 / 10 mix does not change at all.

These are the split of a paper target portfolio. Neither figure is a recommended amount to hold in cash or to put to work, and Fincanva does not tell you what leverage or cash reserve to set. Fincanva provides no financial advice — see Is this financial advice?.