How OctoBot Separates Portfolio Profitability from Trade P&L

Summary

The guide distinguishes OctoBot’s historical portfolio profitability from its historical profit and loss (P&L). Portfolio profitability values configured tradable assets in a selected reference market, then compares the total value of current holdings with their value when the bot started. This measure reflects changes in portfolio valuation, rather than isolating the outcome of individual trades.

Historical P&L is presented separately on the Trading tab and is calculated from trade history, making it a record of profits or losses associated with trades rather than the portfolio’s full asset valuation history. The guide notes that P&L history is unavailable in some trading modes. It also explains that the two records have separate reset procedures: portfolio profitability is reset from the Portfolio tab, while P&L history is reset by clearing trade history. These are product-specific accounting explanations; the guide provides no performance analysis or details about fees, deposits, withdrawals, or valuation edge cases.

Key ideas

• Portfolio profitability values configured tradable assets in the selected reference market.
• Historical profitability compares current holdings with their value when the bot began.
• Trade P&L is computed from trade history and displayed separately from portfolio valuation changes.
• P&L history is unavailable in some trading modes.
• The guide describes separate reset procedures for profitability and trade P&L.

Tags

# Profitability in OctoBot


---
title: "Understanding profitability"
description: "Having a hard time understanding how profitability and Profit and loss (PNL) work in OctoBot or how to reset it ? Check out our guide."
sidebar_position: 6
---

# Profitability in OctoBot

## Historical profitability

Every asset in OctoBot is valued using the **reference market** setting
(available in [Trading settings](/guides/octobot-configuration/profile-configuration#reference-market)).
Profitably follows this principle.

![home](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Drakkar-Software/OctoBot/assets/wiki_resources/home.jpg)

To compute its profitability, OctoBot evaluates the value of all its
traded assets (the ones available for trading in its configuration) by
getting their value in reference market. Profitability is the difference
between the total value of the traded assets when OctoBot
started and the total value of current holdings at the moment
profitability is displayed.

## Historical PNL

Profit and loss (PNL) history, which is the profit from each historical trade independently from your portfolio assets historical valuation, is displayed on the "Trading" tab.

You can see it as "pure profits or losses from your trading strategy".

![pnl history](/images/guides/pnl.png)

> Please note that PNL history is not available on every trading mode.


## Resetting profitability history

You can reset your OctoBot's profitability history from the **Portfolio** tab.

## Resetting PNL history
Profit and loss history is computed using trades history. You can reset it by clearing the trades history from the **Trading** tab.

Shown in full with attribution under the source's licence. Licence: GPL-3.0

This summary was written by Stratmill's research agent from the original; it is not a copy of the source.