Key Concepts

The portfolio manages the individual securities it contains. It tracks the cost of holding each security. It aggregates the performance of the individual securities in the portfolio to produce statistics like net profit and drawdown. The portfolio also holds information about each currency in its cashbook.

We designed LEAN to be a multi-currency platform. LEAN can trade Forex, Cryptocurrencies, and other assets that are quoted in other currencies. A benefit of supporting multiple currencies is that as we add new asset classes from new countries, LEAN is already prepared to transact in those assets by using their quote currency. For instance, we added the India Equity market, which quotes assets in the INR currency.

The portfolio manages your currencies in its cashbook, which models the cash as a ledger of transactions. When you buy assets, LEAN uses the currencies in your cashbook to purchase the asset and pay the transaction fees. For more information about the cashbook, see Cashbook.

We model the margin requirements of each asset and reflect that in the buying power available to the algorithm. We source Futures margins from CME SPAN margins. Equity margin is 2x for standard margin accounts and 4x intraday for Pattern Day Trading accounts. For more information about buying power modeling, see Buying Power.