Question 1

How are Cash % and capital invested calculated?

Accepted Answer

Both come from one sum: add up what every target position is meant to be worth, express it as a share of your capital, and whatever is missing is cash. $$ \begin{gathered} \text{capital invested} = \sum_i \frac{{\lvert \text{target value}_i \rvert}}{{\text{capital}}} \times 100 \[6pt] \text{Cash} = 100 - \text{capital invested} \end{gathered} $$ where: the absolute value of holding i's target notional, in your base currency — a short counts as invested the amount entered on the Positions view Note which figure that sum uses: the target value, before each position is rounded to whole shares. The extra sliver left over by rounding is measured separately, by target vs deployed and accuracy — it is not part of Cash %.

Question 2

How does Fincanva handle it?

Accepted Answer

The Positions view states the split twice. The tray shows capital invested as the Effective exposure KPI (a percentage) and cash as the Cash KPI (a money amount); the Target allocation card shows capital invested as its large percentage, captioned capital invested, with a muted Cash tile in the treemap. Both read the same split, so they can never disagree. Effective exposure is unclamped: it reads above 100% exactly when leverage or an invested portion above 1.00× pushes a strategy past its capital, and Cash then goes negative — see why is my cash negative?. Every figure reads for the Rebalance date selected and the capital entered; change either and they recompute. Cash is capital the plan does not deploy, not a holding you can size or see in the table. If the strategy's last backtest reads Needs re-run, these figures come from that older backtest; the Live page lists such a strategy under Needs attention. Nothing is traded: this is the split of a paper book Fincanva monitors (see Live strategy).

Question 3

What does it look like in practice?

Accepted Answer

A strategy shows 92% capital invested with Cash 8%, on 100,000 of capital: 92,000 is targeted by positions and 8,000 is not. The cause is the strategy's Leverage setting of 0.92 — it deliberately targets 92% of what it was given. Now decode the allocation beside it. The strategy's four holdings carry weights of 40 / 30 / 20 / 10 within its own slice, so their target values are 36,800 / 27,600 / 18,400 / 9,200 — 40% of 92,000, and so on. The treemap tiles read 36.8%, 27.6%, 18.4%, 9.2% and a muted Cash 8%, because tiles are shares of your capital and must total 100%. Both readings are correct at the same time: 40% of the strategy's slice is 36.8% of your capital. Set Leverage to 1.00 and Cash drops to 0% while the 40 / 30 / 20 / 10 mix does not change at all. These are the split of a strategy's paper target positions. Neither figure is a recommended amount to hold in cash or to put to work, and Fincanva does not tell you what leverage or cash reserve to set.

Question 4

Why do the allocation weights and the Cash % seem to disagree?

Accepted Answer

Because the two are normalised against different totals, and that is the single most confusing thing on the page.

Shares of a strategy's own slice. A strategy's allocation weights divide up whatever that strategy was given. They add to 100% of its slice no matter how much of the slice it actually deploys.
Shares of your whole capital. Cash %, capital invested, and every tile in the target allocation treemap are expressed against the capital you entered, so cash shows up as a visible remainder.

So a strategy whose asset weights read 60/40 can still leave a quarter of its slice in cash: the 60/40 describes how the invested part is divided, not how much is invested. Read the weights when you want the mix; read Cash % when you want to know how much of the money is at work. For the same split across a whole backtest rather than at one date, see the capital chart.

Question 5

What leaves capital in cash?

Accepted Answer

Two settings put capital in cash rather than into positions, and they stack:

Leverage below 1. Leverage is a multiplier on position sizes — 1.00 = no leverage, with a range of 0.00 – 3.00 and presets from Cash only to Max. At 0.50 a strategy targets half the money it was allocated and the other half sits idle. This is the case that surprises people, because the asset weights still read as a full 100% split of the invested part.
A deliberate cash reserve. A Combined's Invested portion setting — Share of capital this profile deploys — holds back a slice on purpose.

Leverage above 1.00 works the other way: target positions add up to more than your capital, and Cash % goes negative rather than to zero — see why is my cash negative? below.

Question 6

Why is my cash negative?

Accepted Answer

Cash % (and the Cash amount) goes negative when the target positions add up to more than your capital: the difference is borrowed, and Fincanva calls it margin debt. Two settings can push a strategy or Combined there, and they work the same way in reverse of the two above:

A single strategy's Leverage above 1.00×. At 1.50× a strategy targets 150% of its capital; 50% is borrowed and Cash % reads −50%.
A Combined's Invested portion above 100%. The same borrowing happens at the Combined level — see invested portion's own worked example.

On the Positions page, negative cash relabels the Cash KPI to Cash · margin debt and switches its tone to negative — the figure itself is never clamped to zero, it reads the actual debt. The Target allocation card's exposure bar draws the same debt as a segment to the left of zero, captioned Debt with the amount and its percentage — for example Debt 50,000 · 50%, with the positions laid out to the right of it; an unlevered book draws the same axis with no debt segment at all. Margin debt is financed the same way leverage is — only when the Costs & interests simulation assumption is on — see what leverage costs.