---
title: "Exit reason"
description: "Exit reason is the recorded cause of a position closing — take profit, stop loss, max hold, a rebalance, an Exclude screener, bankruptcy or a delisting."
canonical_url: "https://fincanva.com/docs/strategies/exit-reason"
last_updated: "2026-09-17"
md_url: "https://fincanva.com/docs/strategies/exit-reason.md"
---

# Exit reason

Exit reason is the recorded cause of a position being closed — take profit, stop loss, max hold, a rebalance, an Exclude screener, bankruptcy, or the instrument's price history ending — shown in the "Reason" column of a backtest's trade history. There are seven reasons in all, and every closing trade carries exactly one, so you can tell why each position left the strategy. It is a record of what the simulation did, not a setting: [take profit](/docs/strategies/take-profit), [stop loss](/docs/strategies/stop-loss) and [max hold](/docs/strategies/max-hold-months) are the controls that decide *when* a position closes, while the exit reason tells you afterwards *which* of them closed it.

## 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](/docs/getting-started/screener-attach), 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](/docs/backtesting/bankruptcy-rules) 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](/docs/strategies/execution-time#when-does-a-modelled-trade-fill-within-a-bar) 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](/docs/strategies/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?](/docs/investing-theory/is-this-financial-advice).*