An event-time path is a chart that lines up a screener backtest's matched instruments by when they were selected rather than by calendar date, so day 0 is always the pick date. From that shared starting point it plots the average path of the matches afterwards, letting you read what typically happened to instruments after a screener would have selected them. Because every match is re-centred on its own selection day, picks made in different years overlay on one timeline. It shows the shape of what followed a selection; a holding horizon figure, by contrast, condenses one fixed length of hold into a single number.
Why day 0 is the selection date
Setting day 0 to the selection date is what makes the picks comparable. Calendar-aligned, an instrument picked in 2015 and one picked in 2020 can't be averaged meaningfully; event-aligned, both start at their own day 0 and the chart can average "one month after selection", "six months after selection", and so on across every pick. The line to the right of day 0 is the average of those aligned paths, so a single curve summarises many selections at once.
What the path does and doesn't tell you
The path shows the average behaviour after selection — not any single instrument's outcome, and not a forecast. It reads left to right from day 0: a curve that rises after day 0 means the matches, on average, moved up over the window shown, while a fall means the opposite. It is a way to inspect the after-selection behaviour of a screener's picks alongside the match count and the filters that produced them.
Worked example
A screener's event-time path sets day 0 at each instrument's selection date. Reading right from day 0, the average line shows how the picks moved one, three, six, and twelve months after they were selected — a pick from 2016 and one from 2021 both counted from their own day 0. The point at day 0 is the selection moment itself, so the path starts flat there; everything to its right is the average journey afterwards.
The path averages what happened after past selections on historical data, not what will follow the next one, and no shape it takes is a reason to buy or sell anything. Fincanva provides no financial advice — see Is this financial advice?.
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Fincanva provides no financial advice. Backtests show what would have happened — not what will.
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