How the simulated account moves
All strategies on a board share one example account that starts at 100; a handful of simple rules decide when the allocation shifts, and a six-step example shows them at work.
Every portfolio is one example account. It starts at 100 in cash on the first day of the window, and all strategies on the board share it. Read the 100 as dollars or as a percentage, whichever you like; it's only a starting point so that portfolios and Buy & Hold lines can be compared on one scale. To picture your own 5,000 euros, multiply every amount by 50; the percentages stay the same.
The rules of the game
A share is a budget for the next buy. When a strategy turns Long, it may spend its share (say 20%) of what the account is worth that day. Not a fixed amount, and not again until its next buy.
Sales come first. On any day, the proceeds of sales return to cash before anyone buys, so one strategy's exit can pay for another's entry on the same bar.
Buys only use free cash. If several strategies buy on the same day and there isn't enough, each gets the same fraction of what it asked for. Being first in the list doesn't help.
Short stays short. A strategy that got less than its budget is never topped up later. One that got nothing has missed its entry and waits for its next buy signal, even if cash frees up while it's still Long.
Nothing is rebalanced. No monthly reset, no trimming of winners, no topping up of losers. A position rides until its own strategy sells, so the real mix drifts away from the weights you set.
A strategy counts as buying when it turns from Flat to Long, when it switches to another market, when the window starts while it's already Long, or when its market starts trading while it's Long.
A six-step example
Four strategies: BTC with a 60% budget, and ETH, GOLD and ALT with 40% each. Budgets don't have to add up to 100, because each is a share of the account at the moment that strategy buys. Each row is one bar of the chart, which for most markets is five days.
| Bar | What happens | Cash | BTC | ETH | GOLD | ALT | Account |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The window starts. BTC is already Long and buys with 60% of 100 | 40 | 60 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 100 |
| 2 | ETH and GOLD turn Long. They want 40 each, but only 40 is free, so each gets half | 0 | 60 | 20 | 20 | 0 | 100 |
| 3 | ALT turns Long and wants 40. Cash is 0: a missed entry | 0 | 60 | 20 | 20 | 0 | 100 |
| 4 | BTC rises 50% to 90. GOLD sells, its 20 goes to cash. ALT stays empty | 20 | 90 | 20 | 0 | 0 | 130 |
| 5 | BTC (90) and ETH (20) sell first. GOLD buys again with 40% of 130 = 52 | 78 | 0 | 0 | 52 | 0 | 130 |
| 6 | GOLD falls 25% to 39, now 33% of the account. Nobody tops it up | 78 | 0 | 0 | 39 | 0 | 117 |
On every row cash plus positions equals the account. Bar 2 shows the equal cut: two strategies wanted 80, only 40 was free, and both got half and stayed that size. Bar 3 is a missed entry; ALT's own chart says Long, yet it holds nothing. In bar 4 BTC grew from 60% to 69% of the account just by rising, and nobody trimmed it. In bar 5 the same-day sales paid for GOLD's buy. And in bar 6 GOLD has slipped below its 40% and simply rides.
Where the cash comes from
A portfolio almost always holds some cash, and on the Current chart it can look like a lot. The usual reasons, often several at once:
- Flat strategies. A Flat strategy's share waits in cash. Other strategies don't take it over.
- Missed entries. Cash that freed up after a strategy's buy moment had passed.
- Unplanned rest. Classes that add up to less than 100%, or a rule that puts part in cash.
- Markets not trading yet. The share set aside for a coin that didn't exist early in the window, held in cash or in the Backtest fallback.
Seeing it in the app
The Trades tab on a board lists every buy (Entry) and sale (Exit) of the simulation, newest first, with date, ticker, strategy and amount. Amounts are in dollars of the example account, so they grow as the account grows.
[1. Amounts are dollars in the example account that started at $100. 2. Export CSV downloads the list.]
A board with many strategies can show a hundred or more trades over the years. That's the simulation's activity across all of its markets, not a to-do list. Golden Path Strategies doesn't place trades, and following a portfolio for real would mean doing each of them yourself.
A new window is a new start
Changing Start and End doesn't cut a slice out of the full result. The whole simulation runs again from 100 on your first day, and strategies that are Long that day buy right away. That's why the same board can show different numbers for the same months depending on where the window starts.