Exit reason

What are the exit reasons a backtest records?

Each closing trade is tagged with the reason it happened, drawn from a fixed set of seven causes:

• Take profit — the position reached its take-profit gain.
• Stop loss — the position reached its stop-loss threshold.
• Max hold — the position reached its maximum holding period (a time-based exit), acted on at a scheduled rebalance.
• Rebalance — the position was closed as part of a normal rebalance, when the strategy reweighted and no longer held it (this used to be called a "rotation").
• Exclude screener — at a scheduled rebalance the instrument matched one of the strategy's Exclude screeners, so it was dropped.
• Price history ended — the instrument's own price history ran out while the position was open, because it stopped trading. It is a property of that instrument, not of the backtest: a position still open on an instrument that is still trading when the backtest ends is not closed for this reason.
• Bankruptcy — a bankruptcy rule closed the position: the run, or the strategy inside a Combined, fell below 10% of its reference capital and everything it held was closed.

The reasons do not share one clock. Take profit and Stop loss are checked on the position's own price bars, so either can close a position between two rebalances — see execution time for the price such a close books at. Max hold and Exclude screener act only at the strategy's scheduled rebalances, so a rebalance forced off schedule by a risk condition never produces either of them.

Defaults in Fincanva

• Shown in the "Reason" column of the Trade history table (Italian "Motivo").
• Recorded per closing trade — one position can open and close more than once, and each close carries its own reason.
• The reason is a record of what the simulation did; it is not a setting you edit.

Worked example

Across one backtest, five positions close for five different reasons: a stock up +20% shows Take profit; one that fell to its stop level shows Stop loss; one dropped at a scheduled reweight shows Rebalance; one held to its month cap shows Max hold; and one whose company was taken private mid-test, so its prices stop, shows Price history ended. Reading the Reason column tells you at a glance which rule ended each position.

An exit reason records what a simulation did on historical data, not what a position will do, and no reason in the column is a suggestion to close or hold anything. Fincanva provides no financial advice — see Is this financial advice?.