---
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/glossary/exit-reason"
last_updated: "2026-10-06"
md_url: "https://fincanva.com/glossary/exit-reason.md"
---

# Exit reason

Exit reason is the recorded cause of a position being closed, shown in the "Reason" column of a [backtest](/glossary/backtest)'s trade history. There are seven — take profit, stop loss, max hold, [rebalance](/glossary/rebalance), Exclude [screener](/glossary/screener), price history ended and bankruptcy — and every closing trade carries exactly one, so you can tell why each position left the [strategy](/glossary/strategy).

**Also seen as:** close reason

## How does Fincanva handle it?

- Shown in the "Reason" column of the **Executions** table (Italian "Motivo"), per closing trade — one position can open and close more than once, and each close carries its own reason.
- It is a record of what the simulation did, not a setting you edit: [take profit](/glossary/take-profit), [stop loss](/glossary/stop-loss) and [max hold](/glossary/max-hold-months) are the controls that decide *when* a position closes, and the reason tells you afterwards *which* of them closed it.
- 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 — [execution time](/glossary/execution-time#when-does-a-modelled-trade-fill-within-a-bar) gives the price such a close books at. Max hold and Exclude screener act only at scheduled rebalances, so a rebalance forced off schedule by a [risk condition](/glossary/risk-condition) never produces either.

## What does it look like in practice?

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.*

## What are the exit reasons a backtest records?

Each closing trade is tagged with one of 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](/glossary/instrument) matched one of the strategy's [Exclude screeners](/glossary/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](/glossary/bankruptcy-rules) closed the position: the run, or the strategy inside a [Combined](/glossary/combined), fell below 10% of its reference capital and everything it held was closed.

Fincanva is for education and illustration only. It is not personalised financial advice, and past or simulated results do not predict future ones. [Read the Terms Addendum](https://fincanva.com/terms/addendum#section-3)