2.2 Set up your first strategy: Portfolio Backtesting
① Enter your assets and weights
Start by entering tickers such as AAPL, MSFT, or VTI and their allocations. You can enter up to 25 assets.
- You can lock weights using the 🔒 icon.
- Remove rows via the 🗑 button.
- Use the “Autofix Allocation” dropdown to:
- Evenly distribute weights across all tickers
- Scale current values up to 100 %
- Automatically fill missing weights
💡 You can also switch to Shares Mode. Just enable the toggle “Use Shares” if you want to define your portfolio based on units rather than percentages.
You can also enable:
- Custom Expected Returns: Set your own return assumptions
- Custom Volatility: Provide your own volatility values
Both fields are optional and help you reflect more advanced expectations.
② Set timeframe and benchmark
Under “Options,” choose the backtest period.
You can go back 1, 3, 5, 10, 20, or 30+ years, or define custom start and end dates.
The default benchmark is SPY, but you can select alternatives like VT, VXUS, or QQQ.
③ Rebalancing & Cashflow
Backtests simulate how your strategy would have behaved over time.
- Choose how often you want the portfolio to be rebalanced (monthly, quarterly, etc.)
- Define an initial investment (e.g. $10,000)
- Set up optional cashflows:
- Fixed Contributions
- Fixed Withdrawals
- Percentage Withdrawals
This lets you model real-world investment behavior like monthly deposits or retirement withdrawals.
④ Advanced settings
- Base Currency: Switch between USD and EUR
- Risk-Free Rate: Used for Sharpe Ratio and other metrics (e.g. 2.5 %)
- Reinvest Dividends: Enabled by default
- Fill Missing Price Data: Fills small gaps in historical price series
⑤ Number of forecast years (Monte Carlo Simulation)
If you have a Premium or Professional plan, you can run Monte Carlo simulations to model thousands of potential future outcomes.
- Choose up to 50 forecast years
- Select Return Estimation Method: Sample Mean, Exponentially Weighted Mean, Trimmed Mean, CAPM, etc.
- Select Covariance Estimation Method: Shrinkage, Robust Estimators, Semi-Covariance, and more
⑥ Compare with another portfolio
Click “Add Portfolio” to add a second strategy.
You can then compare both side by side with your chosen benchmark.
When ready, click Submit to run the analysis.