Metrics table

Also seen as: the metrics page, the summary table

Fincanva shows it in two parts on one page: Summary (the whole period) and By year (the same story, one row per calendar year).

What does the Summary table show?

Summary has three columns — the metric name, a Portfolio value and a Benchmark value — so every figure can be read against the benchmark run over the identical dates. The rows are grouped under five headings.

Performance

• Total return (%) — the whole-period gain or loss. See total return.
• Years — not a metric but the span: the number of calendar years the backtest covers, carried to decimal months so a partial year counts. It is the denominator that turns a total into a yearly pace, which is why it sits in this group.
• CAGR — the compound yearly growth rate. See CAGR.
• AAGR — the arithmetic yearly average, which takes CAGR's place in the same slot when Reinvest profits is off. See AAGR.

Drawdown

• Max drawdown — the deepest peak-to-trough fall. See max drawdown.
• Return-to-drawdown ratio — the period's return divided by the size of that fall. See return-to-drawdown ratio.
• Longest drawdown (months) — the longest stretch spent below a prior peak. See longest drawdown.
• Longest recovery (months) — the longest climb back from a trough to a prior peak. See longest recovery.

Volatility and risk

• Volatility — the annualized standard deviation of returns. See volatility.
• Risk-free rate — the period-matched riskless baseline the risk-adjusted metrics subtract. See risk-free rate.
• Sharpe — return above the risk-free rate per unit of volatility. See Sharpe ratio.

Monthly performance

• Positive months (%) — the share of months that closed up. See positive months.
• Best month and Worst month — the single strongest and weakest month of the period. See best month and worst month.

Averages

• Monthly average and Yearly average — the plain averages of the monthly and annual return series. See monthly and yearly average.

The Portfolio value carries the colour: positive figures read green, negative red, and ratio rows are coloured against a neutral band. The Benchmark value is deliberately shown muted, because it is context rather than your result.

How does the By year table work?

By year repeats six of the same metrics per calendar year: the columns are Year, Annual return (%), Max drawdown, Volatility, Return-to-drawdown ratio, Sharpe and Positive months (%). Years are listed newest first, and the page's footer pages through them 25 at a time by default, with 50, 100 and All available.

Each cell stacks two figures: your strategy's value on top, and a second, smaller line underneath. A Benchmark toggle in the card header decides what that second line is.

• Value shows the benchmark's own figure for that year, prefixed with "vs" — and the card's caption reads "Each cell: your portfolio, with the benchmark value below."
• Delta replaces it with the gap between the two, prefixed by an arrow: up and green when your strategy beat the benchmark on that metric, down and red when it trailed. The caption changes to "Each cell: your portfolio, with the gap vs the benchmark below."

Two things about Delta are easy to misread. First, the gap between two percentages is a difference in percentage points, so it is labelled pp rather than % — see excess return. Second, the arrow means "better", not "bigger": for Volatility a lower number is the better one, so a smaller volatility than the benchmark's shows an up arrow.

Why does the CAGR row sometimes read AAGR?

Because the two annualization conventions share one slot and the Reinvest profits assumption chooses between them. With Reinvest profits on, the compounding assumption holds and the row is CAGR; with it off, profits are not compounded and the row becomes AAGR. The same choice flows into Sharpe, whose return term is whichever of the two is active. See simulation assumptions.

Where else do these metrics appear?

• A KPI strip above the table leads with four headline figures — Sharpe ratio, Volatility, Longest drawdown and CAGR vs benchmark.
• Every strategy row in your strategies list carries a compact version of the same read-out: CAGR, Volatility, Sharpe and Max drawdown as columns, alongside the MTD, 1M, YTD and 1Y return windows. All of them are shown by default and can be hidden from the Columns chooser. See return windows.
• The Monthly Returns page repeats the per-year figures in its compact Total, DD and NP/DD columns. See months matrix.
• A Combined's Strategy analytics page reports a per-strategy block that adds Sortino, Tracking error and Information ratio. The last two are measured against the parent Combined, not against the benchmark.

For a row-by-row walkthrough with each metric's convention stated in place, read what every number on the metrics page means.

Defaults in Fincanva

• Every row is computed over the same period for your strategy and for the benchmark, because the benchmark runs as its own full simulation on the same dates and starting capital.
• Percentage rows are shown as percentages and ratio rows as plain numbers — Sharpe and Return-to-drawdown ratio are ratios, not percentages.
• The three simulation assumptions — Costs & interests, Taxes, Reinvest profits — change which pre-computed set of figures the table reads; the switch is immediate and does not re-run the backtest.
• By year opens in Value mode; the choice is a view preference and is not saved to the page's address.
• The table fills in only after a completed run. Before that the page reads "Run this strategy to generate its metrics — use Save & Run from the strategy editor."

Worked example

Read one By year cell out loud. In the Annual return (%) column, the row for 2022 shows −14.2% on top and, in Value mode, "vs −18.0%" below it: the strategy lost 14.2% that year while its benchmark lost 18.0%.

Flip the header toggle to Delta and the same cell shows −14.2% with ↑ 3.8pp beneath it. The arrow points up and reads green because losing less than the benchmark is the better outcome on this metric, and the gap is 3.8 percentage points, not 3.8%. Move one column right to Volatility, where the strategy shows 11.0% against the benchmark's 15.5%: the delta is ↑ 4.5pp, again up and green, because on volatility the smaller number is the better one.

What counts as a good value?

No single row answers that, and the table is built so that no single row has to. Each metric answers one narrow question — how much, how fast, how deep, how bumpy, how often — and reading one in isolation is how a result gets misread: a high return with a deep max drawdown and a high return with a shallow one are very different results with the same first number.

The Benchmark column exists for the same reason. It tells you which part of a figure was the market and which part was the strategy's own doing, which is a genuinely different question from whether the figure is large.

These figures describe what a strategy would have done on historical data, not what it will do. Fincanva provides no financial advice — see Is this financial advice?.