Rejection is not one verdict. An idea can be interesting and still be unsuitable for capital because the premise, implementation, evidence, economics, operational fit, or portfolio role fails a different test.
MSRLab records the category of failure so that a negative result narrows the next question. Rejected means the current claim has not earned promotion; it does not mean the research produced nothing of value.
The categories below are the recurring reasons a strategy, idea, or EA can leave the promotion pipeline.
Hypothesis failure
The rules have no credible behavioural, structural, or economic rationale—or the test does not actually isolate the claimed behaviour.
Provenance and implementation failure
Rules, data transformations, indicator buffers, parameters, or source assumptions cannot be reconstructed well enough to trust what was tested.
Insufficient evidence
Trade count, sample breadth, market coverage, or untouched evidence is too small to distinguish an edge from noise.
Temporal fragility
The result depends on one favourable period, collapses across rolling windows, or survives only after repeatedly inspecting the supposed out-of-sample data.
Parameter instability
Performance exists only in a narrow parameter pocket and neighbouring settings do not support the same market claim.
Unrealistic economics
Spread, commission, slippage, latency, financing, or broker-specific execution removes the apparent advantage.
Hidden tail risk
Grid, martingale, averaging, recovery logic, or uncapped basket exposure creates infrequent losses that invalidate the attractive headline statistics.
Portfolio redundancy
A strategy may work alone but duplicate an existing return driver, symbol concentration, timeframe, or drawdown pattern without improving the book.
Operational or live mismatch
The system cannot run safely under account constraints, or observed frequency, execution, drawdown, and attribution depart materially from the promotion profile.