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changed the opening balance to $10,000 but the first trade was 1/4 million...

first time running a backtest.
changing the opening balance didn't seem to alter the opening position, draw-down or purchase limits.

1 response

Hi Steven, Welcome to Quantopian!

You're hitting a common newcomer problem - it's something I know we have to fix, but we haven't fixed it yet. Sorry for the confusion.

When you set the opening balance, that balance used to compute your returns. It doesn't actually affect any trades the algo executes. So you have craaaaazy high returns because you're buying and selling huge amounts on a nominal start of $10,000. You need to write code for your own cash management to prevent yourself from going overboard. Check out this example.

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