The data frontier is the most recent market date Fincanva has price data for, and it is where every backtest ends — not at today's date. Prices arrive as one bar per trading day, so the newest usable data point is the last completed trading day that has been loaded: on an ordinary weekday that is yesterday's close, and on a Monday it is the previous Friday's. Data freshness is the matching question about a result: whether the result you are looking at was computed against the current frontier or an older one.
Also seen as: data frontier, "data as of"
Why does my backtest end yesterday and not today?
Because today's close does not exist yet. A run ends at the frontier — the last trading day whose data has actually landed — so a backtest you start on Wednesday morning ends at Tuesday's close, and one you start on Monday ends at Friday's. Nothing about the run is truncated by this: the replay covers everything from your start year up to the frontier, and every figure on the results page ends on that same date, including the month-to-date and year-to-date windows. Intraday prices are not part of the model at all — the smallest step Fincanva works in is one trading day.
Why do my numbers change when I did not touch anything?
Because the frontier moved. When new market data is loaded, the frontier advances by a trading day and every result computed against the old frontier is no longer current — so the same strategy, unedited, recomputes and comes back with one more day of history and slightly different figures. That is why a strategy can read Up to date in the evening and, without you touching it, read Out of date or Running the next morning before settling back (see run status). This is also distinct from plan compliance: "up to date" is about the data, "compliant" is about what your account is allowed to run.
Defaults in Fincanva
- Every backtest and every screener run uses the frontier as its end date — the wall-clock date is never used.
- The frontier is the upper edge of every instrument's coverage window; the lower edge is where that instrument's own history begins.
- Market data is refreshed daily; while a refresh is in progress the simulation engine reports "Engine updating data" and already-computed results stay visible.
- A frontier that has moved invalidates results computed against the previous one, which is what the daily warm recomputes for the strategies you follow Live.
- Because results belong to a setup and a data date (see shared compute), no result ever mixes two different frontiers — a run is entirely on one side of a refresh or the other.
- Day-to-day drift of this kind is expected behaviour, not a defect: one extra trading day changes every metric that ends at the frontier.
Worked example
On Tuesday evening a strategy shows Up to date, a total return computed to Monday's close, and a Compute time from that run. Overnight, Tuesday's market data is loaded and the frontier advances from Monday to Tuesday. On Wednesday morning you open the same strategy without editing anything: the saved result was computed to Monday, the current frontier is Tuesday, so the result is no longer current — the status shows Running briefly and settles back to Up to date with one more trading day included. The total return has moved slightly, and so has every metric that ends at the frontier. Open it again on Wednesday afternoon and nothing changes: the frontier is still Tuesday, because Wednesday's close has not been published yet.
Where this term is used
Generated · 0 pagesThe pages that reference this term — so a term page is somewhere you pass through, not somewhere you land and stop.
Fincanva provides no financial advice. Backtests show what would have happened — not what will.
GLOSSARY · 193 TERMS