In my experience w/Wealth Lab strategies, comparisons to Strategy results vs. B&H results frequently are misleading because the two "cumulations" start at different times -- the B&H calculation starts immediately at the beginning of a specified Date Range, but the first Strategy Buy Trade may not be generated until significantly later, at which time the B&H value already may be significantly higher or lower than 0%. An example is a Date Range that starts prior to the 2008 market downturn, but wherein the Strategy doesn't generate its first BUY Trade until early 2009, at which time the B&H already has dropped 50%. The apparant better performance of the Strategy vs. B&H is due more to the fact that the B&H started at -50% than the fact that the Strategy is superior to B&H.

I realize that technically this probably is the correct way to analyze a given time period, but as an alternative analysis is there a way to make the B&H calculation start at the same time the first Strategy Trade is generated?

Check this out:

Wealth-Lab Wiki FAQ > Where did the Lead Bars go?

Thank you for the quick response, Eugene.

If I understand the concept of Lead Bars correctly, this involves the program capturing strategy data for a period prior to the beginning of a Date Range so that strategies that have long analysis periods could begin their analyses closer to the beginnings of the Date Ranges.

That's one approach (although the Lead Bar feature apparently no longer exists), but what I am looking for is the opposite -- instead of calculating Strategy Trades earlier, I simply want to delay the start of the B&H calculation until the date the first Strategy Trade is made.

I presume that the Wealth-Lab program contains some sort of "hard-coded" routine that tells the B&H routine to reference the beginning of the Date Range as the beginning of its B&H calculations. It seems like that routine could be modified to include an alternate that would reference the date of the first Strategy Buy instead of the start of the Date Range, but I am not a programmer, and a modification of the B&H routine might be beyond the scope of a user modification. What do you think -- would the addition of such a feature require a modification of the W-L program itself? If so, who would do that -- is that something that you guys could do, or would it require action by Fidelity (or some other entity)?

Call it Lead Bars or delaying the B&H start -- unfortunately, neither one is available.

Modification of the current behavior is beyond the scope of a user modification. It is believed that introducing an offset to B&H start date may be possible in a custom performance visualizer. However, since that would not affect the existing ones (especially built-in), the optimal way would be for the Fidelity developers to add an option.

I'd suggest you call your Fidelity rep, and enter a support ticket in our system. Thanks.