Simulation start year

Also seen as: Starting year

What counts as a good value?

There is no single right start year — it depends on the story you want the backtest to tell. An earlier start includes more market conditions, including sharp declines like 2008, so the metrics reflect how the strategy would have weathered them; a later start focuses on more recent regimes but hides earlier stress. A start year only works if the instruments in the strategy have price data that far back.

Defaults in Fincanva

• The default start year is 2000.
• The picker runs from the current year back to 1792, so you can start earlier than 2000 as well as later. What limits a run in practice is price history, not the picker: a start year only produces results for the years your instruments actually have data for, and almost every instrument's history begins far later than 1792.
• Choosing a later start year shortens the backtest and drops the earlier history from every metric.
• Changing the start year is a settings change, so the backtest recomputes on the next run.

Worked example

A strategy is backtested twice with no other change. Starting in 2008 places the opening of the run right at a major market decline, so the early equity curve falls before it recovers and the drawdown and return figures carry that shock. Starting in 2010 begins after the worst of that decline, so the same strategy shows a smoother early curve and different headline metrics. Neither is "more correct" — they answer different questions, which is why the start-date sensitivity view exists.