Reinvest delay is a cooldown on re-entry: after a position closes, the instrument it held stays out of the strategy's choices for the number of months you set, so the strategy cannot buy that same instrument straight back. It is not an exit rule — it does not decide when a position closes, only how soon the instrument can return.
Also seen as: re-entry cooldown
How does Fincanva handle it?
- The control is labelled Reinvest delay, with the helper "Wait this long before re-entering an instrument after its position closes"; a screen reader announces its number field as "Months before re-entering a closed instrument".
- It can be switched on only in Compose with a qualifying screener attached; without one the strategy's candidates are always the instruments you picked, and the delay stays off.
- Off by default. When you switch it on, the value starts at the strategy's own rebalance interval, and you raise it from there.
- Entered in months (suffix "mo"), up to 120, and always a whole multiple of the cadence: at a 3-month cadence anything else is rejected with "Must be a multiple of 3 months". Changing the cadence does not change a value already set; if it is no longer a multiple, the field flags it with the same message and you pick a valid value.
- It applies whatever closed the position — a take profit, a stop loss, a max hold, an Exclude screener, a rebalance that dropped the instrument, or the end of its price history.
What does it look like in practice?
A strategy rebalances every month and has reinvest delay set to 3 months. On 10 March one of its holdings hits its stop loss and is closed. At the April and May rebalances the strategy's rules select that instrument again, but it is still inside its delay, so it is left out and the strategy allocates among its other candidates. At the June rebalance — three calendar months on from March — the instrument is eligible again and can be bought back if the rules still select it.
Set the delay to 1 month instead and it makes no difference in this case: April is already one calendar month on from March, so the instrument can return at the April rebalance, the first one after the stop-out. Turn the setting off and the same is true — without a delay, the earliest the instrument can come back is the next rebalance that selects it.
What does reinvest delay do to freed-up cash?
Nothing directly: reinvest delay holds back the instrument, not the money. While the delay runs, the instrument whose position closed is left out of the candidates the strategy chooses from at each rebalance — exactly as if its selection rules had not picked it — even when those rules select it again. The cash the exit freed is handled at the next rebalance like any other cash in the strategy, by its allocation method.
Without the delay, an instrument that has just been closed can be bought again at any later rebalance that selects it. With it, a strategy that keeps selecting the same instrument cannot rotate straight back into it — the common use is to stop a stopped-out position being re-bought at the very next rebalance. The delay is counted in whole multiples of the rebalance interval, so the instrument comes back into play on a rebalance date — the same clock that governs rebalance cadence.
When does the clock start — at the exit, or at the rebalance that records it?
At the exit itself. The delay is measured from the date the position actually closed, not from the rebalance that booked it. A position stopped out or taken-profit between rebalance dates carries the date of the day it was hit, so its instrument starts waiting from that day.
In practice this matters less often than it sounds: the delay counts whole calendar months crossed, not elapsed days. A position closed on 3 March and one closed on 20 March have both crossed one month boundary by 1 April, so a one-month delay expires for both on the same date. The exit date only buys time when it falls in an earlier calendar month than the rebalance that would otherwise have recorded it.
And the delay expiring is not the instrument being bought: the strategy only checks eligibility at a rebalance, so an instrument whose delay runs out mid-period still waits for the next rebalance — and for its selection rules to pick it.
Why can a delay equal to the rebalance interval be shorter than it looks?
Because the delay counts calendar months crossed since the exit, while eligibility is checked only at a rebalance. On a monthly rebalance with a 1-month delay, an instrument stopped out on 20 January — after the January rebalance — has crossed a month boundary by the February rebalance and can be bought again there; one stopped out on 3 February, before the February rebalance, has not, and waits until March. A delay of twice the interval always skips at least one rebalance. When a stop loss or take profit is on and the delay equals the interval, the Exits card raises the strategy alert to review "The wait after a stop is shorter than it looks", which names the doubled value.