Mark Live

Also seen as: Go live · Live (the on state) · Unfollow and Stop following (the reverse)

Does marking a strategy Live trade anything?

No. Marking a strategy Live places no orders and moves no money. Fincanva has no broker connection at all — there is nothing for an order to be sent to. Going Live starts paper monitoring: the app follows the positions the strategy's rules imply and shows how that paper book would have performed, exactly as a backtest does, but continuing forward from today instead of stopping at the end of history.

The one place this can read like real trading is the order plan, which lists what the strategy would buy, sell, and resize at its next rebalance. That list is a plan on paper — Fincanva does not act on it, and you would have to place any of those trades yourself, with your own broker, entirely at your own discretion.

Following a strategy Live is not a prediction and not a recommendation. Fincanva provides no financial advice — see Is this financial advice?.

What changes when a strategy is Live?

Four things change, and none of them touch money:

• It appears in Portfolios. The confirm dialog states it plainly: "It'll show in Portfolios and count toward your dashboard."
• Its results are kept current automatically. Live strategies are refreshed for you as new market data arrives; a strategy that is not Live only recomputes when you press Run or Re-run. See Run status for the states you will see.
• It is starred automatically, and the star locks. Going Live adds the strategy to your favourites and keeps it there while it stays Live — trying to unstar it shows "Turn the strategy off first". Starring strategies and screeners as favourites covers the star, the lock, and the favourites cap.
• It counts toward your dashboard, where its own numbers feed the whole-book summary.

Editing a Live strategy does not silently re-run it: an edited strategy waits for you to run it explicitly, so a change you make never triggers a backtest by itself.

Defaults in Fincanva

• Only your own strategies can be marked Live — a Public strategy has no Live control, because it is not yours to follow.
• Both directions ask for confirmation. Going Live asks "Mark this strategy as Live?" and commits with Mark as Live; turning it off asks "Stop following this strategy?" and commits with Stop following.
• There are two ways in: the Live / Off switch on the strategy itself (labelled Go live while off), and Mark Live in the strategy's row menu, which reads Unfollow once the strategy is live.
• A copy is never followed automatically: Duplicate and Copy to Mine both produce a strategy whose Live switch starts Off.
• Unfollowing changes nothing about the strategy itself — it leaves Portfolios, stops counting toward your dashboard, and can be marked Live again later.

Worked example

You have backtested a strategy and want to watch how it behaves from here. You open it and flip the Off switch; a dialog asks "Mark this strategy as Live?" and you confirm with Mark as Live. The switch turns green and reads Live, the strategy appears on the Portfolios page, its star turns gold and locks, and Fincanva starts keeping its numbers current as new market days arrive.

No broker was connected and no trade was sent. Two months later you decide to stop: you flip the switch back, confirm "Stop following this strategy?" with Stop following, and the strategy leaves Portfolios. Its star unlocks, its saved settings and its whole backtest history are untouched, and you can mark it Live again whenever you want.