Strategy type

What are the four strategy types?

Each type describes what you are building, and each carries a content requirement the app enforces before you can continue:

If the content does not match the type, the app blocks you and says which way to fix it: "Pick exactly 1 instrument.", "Pick 2 or more instruments.", or "Add at least 1 screener." The message offers Change strategy type as the alternative to changing the content.

Full setup is the only type with no content requirement, because it exposes every setting rather than trimming the build to a shape.

Can you change a strategy's type later?

Yes. The Strategy type row in the Full editor opens the same four tiles and switches the strategy to another type, after a confirmation that spells out the consequence. That confirmation covers two separate things:

• Any section you had configured that the new type does not require is reset to its defaults.
• If the new type's Asset selection surface cannot hold what you have already selected, it says how much will go — for example "5 selected instruments will be removed" when you switch a hand-picked basket to Screener.
• If your setup needs more than the new type offers, it says that instead: nothing further is removed, and the strategy keeps showing as the wider type.

Nothing is removed until you save — switching back before saving keeps everything.

The strategy type shapes what a strategy can hold, not only which steps you see: each type offers exactly one Asset selection surface — a basket you pick, or a screener that picks for you — and only Full setup offers all of them. That is why narrowing to Screener drops a hand-picked basket: a Screener strategy builds its selection from rules, so it has nowhere to keep one.

Fincanva never trims your setup just to make a narrower type fit. Two Include screeners will not survive as a Screener strategy, and five instruments will not survive as Single instrument — so rather than delete the extras, the strategy stays as the wider type and keeps everything. The confirmation tells you which type that will be before you commit. For how each type reshapes the guided build, see Choosing a strategy type.

Defaults in Fincanva

• You pick the type at creation, under the question "How do you want to build this strategy?", and the picker says outright: "You can change anything later — this just shapes the next few steps."
• The type shows as a Strategy type column value in your strategies list. A Combined is not one of the four — it displays as Combined in that column instead.
• The type does not change what a backtest computes, and it hides no section: in the Full editor every section is either required by your type or offered as an optional add-on, whichever type you started from.
• What the type does constrain is the Asset selection surface. Compose and its Include/Exclude screener pools exist only on Full setup, and max positions is not a control anywhere you pick instruments by hand — on Single instrument, on Multiple instruments and on Full setup's Basket surface it is simply the number you picked.

Worked example

You have a list of five stocks and you want to see how holding all five would have done. That is the Multiple instruments type: it wants 2 or more instruments, so five qualifies, and it gives you the Allocation step you need to decide how capital is split across them. Picking Single instrument instead would block you at Asset selection with "Pick exactly 1 instrument.", because that type holds exactly one.

If you later replace your hand-picked five with a screener that chooses the holdings each period, switch the type to Screener — it requires at least 1 screener, and your fixed basket is no longer what defines the strategy. The confirmation warns that those five instruments will be removed, because a Screener strategy has no basket to keep them in. They are still there until you save, so you can back out.