Choose the instruments a strategy holds
You set what a strategy may hold on its Asset selection card: instruments and lists you add by hand, a screener that picks by rule, or both.
Steps
- Open Asset selection. It is a card on the strategy's Settings, and a chapter of Step by step. On a Full setup strategy, pick its view first — Basket, Screen or Compose; every other strategy type has one view and no switch — see asset-selection modes.
- Search and add instruments. Under Assets, type a ticker or a name into "Search instruments or lists…" and pick a result: it joins the list. On a Single instrument strategy the one slot is replaced instead, with Change.
- Or add a whole list. Pick a list in the same search, and all its members join at once; any already selected are skipped. In Step by step, Browse lists opens a side sheet where you add a list's instruments one at a time or all together, then press Done.
- Or let a screener choose. On Screen or Compose, a screener picks the instruments at every rebalance — see Attach a screener to a strategy. On Compose the instruments you add bound what the screeners may pick.
- Save the strategy, then run it — see Save, run and copy a strategy.
Done. The list shows what the strategy may trade, each instrument with its ticker, name and asset type — or reads All instruments when an entry screener chooses from its own universe. A strategy needs at least one instrument or one attached screener before it can be saved and run, and your plan caps how many instruments and positions one strategy holds — see Bring a strategy within your plan; on a Public strategy you can open the card but not save — make your own copy first.
What does the card show when nothing is picked?
No count badge: with nothing picked, the instrument list itself says what the strategy has to choose from, and the answer depends on whether an entry screener is attached.
- No entry screener — the list reads No instruments and, where filters sit below it, "With no instruments and no entry screener the engine buys nothing: search above to pick some, or add an entry screener." The strategy has no candidate on any date, so it would never invest; its backtest is refused by the blocking strategy alert "The strategy has no instruments", or by the instrument count its strategy type requires.
- An entry screener — the list reads All instruments: the screener searches its own whole universe at every rebalance, and the positions are filled from what passes it — see screener attach.
What do the Delisted and Not tradable badges mean?
Delisted marks an instrument that no longer trades on a live exchange — a company that was acquired, went private or went bankrupt — whose history is still in the catalogue. Not tradable marks an instrument held in the reference data for coverage that you cannot hold as a live position. Both are informational: they say why the instrument behaves differently from one trading today.
Delisted instruments stay usable rather than being dropped, which keeps a backtest free of survivorship bias: it can hold names that later delisted instead of only the survivors. The same catalogue, spanning several asset classes, stands behind every strategy however its instruments are chosen — what it holds and how it is kept current: what your backtests run on.
What happens when you switch between Basket, Screen and Compose?
Nothing is lost until you save. What the new view cannot use leaves the strategy at the switch, and comes back if you switch back before saving; saving, discarding your changes or opening another strategy ends this, and whatever is still set aside is not saved. Until then the alerts, notes and cards describe exactly what the save will send.
- To Screen sets aside the instruments you picked, with an allocation built on them — Fixed weights, which cannot run on a universe a screener alone chooses, and a Mimicking or Beta neutral reference that was one of them; each is replaced by the method a new Screen strategy starts with. Max positions on Screen is the value you last gave it on Screen or in Compose, never the basket's count — the default if you have been on Basket only.
- To Basket sets aside a screener Basket cannot show: one without filter rows, and any beyond the one its Filters strip shows.
- Out of Compose, the settings Basket and Screen cannot show are kept for your return — see What happens to my extra screeners if I leave Compose?
Changing the strategy type sets settings aside the same way, and its dialog counts what the save will not carry.
Which screener does Screen hold?
The one it shows. Arriving on Screen — by switching to it, changing the type to Screener or creating a Screener strategy — gives the strategy the screener the card displays: the default universe, with no filters of your own yet, so what you see is what runs. Leave Screen before changing it and it goes with you: the strategy holds exactly what it held before. Once you edit it — a filter, the universe, a screener from your library — it is yours and stays.
Removing an attached screener on Screen puts that default back. A stored Screener strategy with no screener opens holding the default as an unsaved change: Save is offered, and until you save, the backtest is judged on the strategy as stored. On a plan that includes no screeners inside strategies, nothing is added.
UPDATED 2026-10-07REVIEWED 2026-10-07