> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.anthid.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Positions

> What a position record represents, where the number comes from, and why Anthid reports the broker's figure rather than calculating its own

A position is a holding in one symbol on one trading account: how much you hold, and what it cost on average.

<Warning>
  **Positions are reported for Lightspeed Connect accounts today.** The Alpaca integration does not yet report holdings back to Anthid, so an Alpaca account shows no positions through the platform. Orders stream and are recorded as normal. Read Alpaca positions from Alpaca directly until this changes. See [Alpaca](/pages/brokers/alpaca).
</Warning>

## The broker is the source

Position figures come from the broker. Anthid relays them rather than calculating them from the fills it has seen.

This is a deliberate choice, and it is the most important thing to understand about the numbers on this page. Adding up observed fills sounds equivalent and is not. A calculated figure drifts from the broker's own whenever anything happens that Anthid did not observe: a fill that arrived while a connection was down, a corporate action, a trade placed directly with the broker, a broker-side adjustment or correction.

Drift in a position number is worse than a gap, because it looks like data. Reporting what the broker says means the figure either matches your broker statement or is visibly stale, and both of those are recoverable. A silently wrong number is not.

<Card title="Positions can reflect activity Anthid never saw" icon="circle-info">
  Because the broker is the source, a position can include the result of trades that did not originate through Anthid. An account traded both through the platform and directly at the broker reports the combined holding, which is the true one.
</Card>

## Knowing how fresh a figure is

Each position record carries the time Anthid observed it. That is the age of the information, not the age of the holding.

A figure that has not been updated in a while usually means nothing has changed about that symbol. After a connection problem it can also mean the platform has not caught up yet. Where the distinction matters, check the account's connection status: a healthy connection and an old timestamp means quiet, not stale.

## Current and historical

As with orders, Anthid keeps the two apart.

**Current** positions give the latest known holding per symbol. This is what an account view or dashboard should show.

**Position history** gives records over a time range, for reporting and for analysing how a book changed.

Live updates are a view over the same activity rather than a substitute for the record. A system that loses its connection and reconnects does not receive what it missed, so current positions are what close the gap.

## A position is not an order

The two answer different questions and can disagree without either being wrong.

An order describes one instruction and its execution. A position describes the net result of everything that has executed. An open order contributes nothing to a position until it fills, and a filled order's contribution is permanent even though the order itself is finished.

If you need to know why a position is what it is, read the orders behind it over the same window. The position record carries a holding, not an explanation of how it got there.

## Related

* [Orders](/pages/concepts/orders) for the executions that build a position
* [Intents](/pages/concepts/intents) for the instructions that open orders
* [Ledger API reference](/api-reference/ledger/overview) for endpoints, filters, field names, and pagination