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Finbula Blog

Read the market with more clarity.

Notes from the Finbula team to help you evaluate AI analysis, signals and your portfolio with more context.

CategoriesAllAI AnalysisBotsMarket SignalsMarketsPortfolio ManagementSecurity
Tags#AI#API keys#Automation#Backtest#Backtesting#Bots#Crypto#Data sources#Liquidity#Markets#Portfolio#Portfolio Management#Risk#Security#Signals#Stocks#Transparency

Latest articles

Graduated cylinders standing side by side on a laboratory bench, the liquid in each one resting at a different mark.

8 min readBots

How a partially filled order distorts your records

When half an order fills, the position counts as open but smaller than planned. Average cost, stop size, and the one check a bot has to run.

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A full-height rotating turnstile at the entrance to a site, a locked gate beside it and wire fencing running away.

8 min readBots

How an exchange API rate limit affects a trading bot

Once the limit is crossed the exchange refuses requests and the bot reads that as a market event. Weights, backoff, and keeping the order path separate.

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An old electrical switchboard full of ceramic fuses and toggle switches, each switch in its own position doing its own job.

8 min readMarkets

The difference between market, limit and stop-limit

The three order types do not do the same job. Which one guarantees the price, which guarantees the fill, and the case where a stop never fills at all.

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A close-up of an old piano, the ivory keys worn and several of the black keys between them missing or collapsed.

8 min readMarkets

Missing candles, data gaps and maintenance windows

If three candles are absent from an hourly chart, the indicator never saw those three hours. Three causes of a gap, and the most misleading way to fill one.

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The shore of a drawn-down reservoir, the old water line standing out as a pale band across the hillside.

8 min readPortfolio Management

Why maximum drawdown is read before the return

Annual return tells you what a strategy earned. Maximum drawdown tells you whether you would still be running it, and the link between the two is arithmetic.

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A metal world map on an airport wall with a row of city clocks beneath it, each showing a different time.

7 min readMarkets

Why candle close and time zone change the same chart

The same asset's daily chart can look different on two platforms. The cause is not the data but where the day ends, and it reaches indicators and backtests too.

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A single worn millstone, its surface eroded and stained with moss, laid on dark cloth.

8 min readBots

How fees and slippage eat a strategy's return

Costs that look small per trade get multiplied by the number of trades until they outweigh the strategy itself. How to work the cost out before you run it.

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Two water level gauges standing in a river, one marked in feet and one in metres, with the water partway up both.

8 min readPortfolio Management

Working out portfolio return when money moves in and out

A calculation based on the change in balance counts your own deposits as gains. Two standard measures of return, and which question each of them answers.

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A tall graduated glass cylinder on a laboratory bench, the liquid sitting midway up the millilitre marks.

7 min readPortfolio Management

The three numbers a position size comes from

Position size is a division of three numbers, not a percentage of the balance. How the arithmetic works and why changing two at once hides the result.

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An old telephone switchboard panel of numbered rows and columns, with patch connections plugged in at a few points.

8 min readBots

What happens when a bot loses its exchange connection

The risk in a dropped connection is not that the order failed to send. It is not knowing whether it sent. Client order IDs and the reconciliation step.

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A currency exchange board: two clocks at the top show different times, with separate buy and sell rates listed for each currency below.

7 min readMarkets

Why does the same asset show a different price on two exchanges?

The gap isn't an error, it's the natural result of exchanges keeping separate order books. What widens it, and why the gap you see can't be taken.

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A scale model of an airliner mounted on a sting inside a wind tunnel, the dark mouth of the tunnel behind it.

8 min readBots

Three mechanisms that inflate a backtest result

A backtest isn't a prediction, it's a measurement of the past. Three mechanisms that flatter the result, and how to make the test harder.

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The Frankfurt Stock Exchange trading floor seen from above, with quote boards running along the walls.

8 min readMarkets

What to watch when crypto and stocks share one table

Two assets on adjacent rows may not trade on the same calendar, in the same currency, or with the same liquidity. Four differences that break the comparison.

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An empty ATR-72 simulator cockpit at dusk, instruments lit, a simulated horizon beyond the windscreen.

8 min readBots

Five questions before you take a bot live

A strategy that looks good in Demo mode can behave differently with real money. Five questions to answer first, and the stop rule to write down.

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A transparent padlock showing its pin mechanism, with two keys lying beneath it.

7 min readSecurity

Which permissions should an exchange API key have?

Read-only, trade and withdrawal sit on the same screen but do not carry the same risk. What to check before you connect a key.

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Rows of servers in a data centre, lit by blue indicator lights.

4 min readAI AnalysisFeatured

Three things to check when reading an AI analysis

How confidence, sources, and counter-scenarios make an investment decision more visible.

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A laptop screen showing a candlestick price chart above a table of open positions.

3 min readPortfolio Management

Reading a portfolio spread across accounts in one view

How to read the allocation, and the context it needs, when assets are spread across separate accounts and markets.

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The interior of an old railway signal box, with a long row of hand levers along the window wall.

4 min readMarket Signals

Reading signal outcomes and risk together

What a signal says, what it does not say, and the frame its outcomes should be read in.

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