---
title: "Metrics table"
description: "The metrics table is the Performance Metrics read-out that sets every backtest figure for your strategy beside its benchmark, for the whole period and by year."
canonical_url: "https://fincanva.com/glossary/metrics-table"
last_updated: "2026-10-07"
md_url: "https://fincanva.com/glossary/metrics-table.md"
---

# Metrics table

The metrics table is the read-out on a [strategy](/glossary/strategy)'s **Performance Metrics** page that sets every [backtest](/glossary/backtest) figure for your strategy beside the same figure for its [benchmark](/glossary/benchmark): **Summary** covers the whole period in six groups, and **By year** repeats six of the figures for each calendar year.

**Also seen as:** the metrics page, the summary table

## How does Fincanva handle it?

A KPI strip above the table leads with four headline figures: Sharpe ratio, Volatility, Longest drawdown and CAGR vs benchmark.

- The benchmark runs as its own full simulation on the same dates and with the same [starting capital](/glossary/starting-capital), so every pair of figures compares like with like.
- Percentage rows are shown as percentages and ratio rows as plain numbers — **Sharpe** and **Return-to-drawdown ratio** are ratios.
- The three [simulation assumptions](/glossary/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.
- The table fills in only after a completed run. Before that the page reads "No results yet" and "Backtest this strategy to generate its metrics."

How to read it against the benchmark, year by year: [Compare a strategy with its benchmark in Performance Metrics](/docs/analysis/compare-a-strategy-with-its-benchmark-in-performance-metrics). Each row, with its convention: [What every number in Performance Metrics means](/docs/analysis/what-every-number-in-performance-metrics-means).

## What does the Summary table show?

**Summary** has three columns — the metric, a **Strategy** value and a **Benchmark** value — and its rows are grouped under six headings:

- **Performance**: **Total return (%)**, **Years** — the span the backtest covers, carried to decimal months, which turns a total into a yearly pace ([annualization](/glossary/annualization)) — and **CAGR**, which reads **AAGR** while **Reinvest profits** is off. See [total return](/glossary/total-return), [CAGR](/glossary/cagr), [AAGR](/glossary/aagr).
- **Drawdown**: **Max drawdown**, **Return-to-drawdown ratio**, **Longest drawdown (months)** and **Longest recovery (months)**. See [drawdown](/glossary/max-drawdown), [return-to-drawdown ratio](/glossary/return-to-drawdown-ratio), [longest drawdown](/glossary/longest-drawdown), [longest recovery](/glossary/longest-recovery).
- **Volatility and risk**: **Volatility**, **Semideviation (downside only)**, **Risk-free rate** and **Sharpe**. See [volatility](/glossary/volatility), [semideviation](/glossary/semideviation), [risk-free rate](/glossary/risk-free-rate), [Sharpe ratio](/glossary/sharpe-ratio).
- **Worst days · 95%**: **Daily VaR · historical**, **Daily VaR · Gaussian** and **Daily CVaR · historical**. See [value at risk](/glossary/value-at-risk), [conditional value at risk](/glossary/conditional-value-at-risk).
- **Monthly performance**: **Positive months (%)**, **Best month** and **Worst month**. See [positive months](/glossary/positive-months), [best month and worst month](/glossary/best-month-and-worst-month).
- **Averages**: **Monthly average** and **Yearly average**. See [monthly and yearly average](/glossary/monthly-and-yearly-average).

## 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.

Fincanva is for education and illustration only. It is not personalised financial advice, and past or simulated results do not predict future ones. [Read the Terms Addendum](https://fincanva.com/terms/addendum#section-3)