When does the site update, and what does FINAL mean?
DMS recomputes every strategy once a day, in the evening, after the US market has closed and the day's closing prices have settled. Nothing changes during the trading day except live quotes.
The daily cycle
All times below are US Eastern. Phoenix runs three hours behind Eastern in summer.
Closing price data is fetched in several passes through the evening, starting shortly before 6 PM and continuing into the late evening. Multiple passes exist because data providers do not publish everything at once, and a ticker that is not ready on the first attempt gets picked up on a later one.
Strategy results are then computed twice:
- Around 8:15 PM, a first pass runs against whatever data has arrived by then.
- Around 12:15 AM, a second pass runs after every fetch attempt has had its chance.
The after-midnight pass is the authoritative one. The 8:15 PM run is a useful early look, but it can be working from an incomplete picture.
The practical consequence: a figure you check at 9 PM Eastern can differ from the same figure the next morning. That is not an error being corrected. It is the early pass being superseded by the complete one. If a number matters, read it after midnight Eastern, or simply read it the following day.
FINAL versus "through" on the allocation table
The most recent row of a strategy's allocation table carries a small tag telling you how settled it is:
- A green FINAL tag means every input for that month has been confirmed complete. The row will not change again.
- An amber "through" tag with a date means the figures reflect closing prices only up to that date. The month is not finished, or the data for it is not fully confirmed. It can still move.
The tag reports the actual state of the underlying data rather than the calendar. A month that has ended on the calendar is not automatically final; it becomes final when the data confirming it has arrived and been verified.
The current month
While a month is in progress, two different things are shown, and they behave differently.
The allocation is published daily. You can see what a strategy is holding right now. This updates as the month goes on.
The return is not published until the month closes. Instead, during the month you see a month-to-date figure, labeled MTD rather than Month Return. MTD is built from live quotes and moves during the trading day. It is a running estimate of an unfinished month, not a result.
When the month closes, the MTD figure is replaced by a settled monthly return computed from month-end closing prices, and it becomes a permanent part of the record.
"Provisional" means something different
There is also a row labeled Provisional, and it is easy to confuse with the freshness tag above. They are unrelated.
The Provisional row is a projection of next month's allocation, showing what the strategy would hold if the current month ended today. It is a forward look, not a status label, and it is a Premium feature.
It also moves. A projection made on the 8th of the month is built on eight days of incomplete data, and the signals driving it can reverse before month-end. Treat it as a preview of where things are heading, not as an instruction.
A note for free accounts
Current-month allocations for Premium strategies unlock for free users on the 11th of each month. Everything else on the daily cycle above applies the same way regardless of account type.
What to do with all this
- For anything that matters, read the figure the day after, not the same evening.
- Trust the FINAL tag rather than the calendar.
- Do not act on a Provisional projection before the month has closed.
- If a number changed overnight, that is the system working as designed.