PEAD asymmetric exit (loser-stop + uncapped-winner)

The question

Is the post-earnings-announcement-drift edge durable and broad-based across the population, or driven by a handful of outlier names? The core go-live question for the equities sleeve.

How it was tested

The hypothesis, its exact trigger, the outcome it predicts, and the pass/fail bar were written down and cryptographically hash-locked before any data was tested, then held through a mandatory cooling-off period. The backfill ran exactly once against those frozen parameters — no re-tuning, no curve-fitting — using adversarial statistics (stationary-bootstrap confidence intervals, multiple-testing correction, purged cross-validation with an embargo, and walk-forward out-of-sample splits). The specific trigger thresholds are proprietary and omitted here.

The outcome

RAN 2026-06-22 → NOISE / DISCONFIRMED. OOS n=427 (split 2024-01-01): A1 terminal wealth 5.055 < B_decay5 baseline 5.283; paired-delta −0.001% CI [−0.318,+0.283] straddles 0; skew NOT preserved 1.842 < 2.342 → fails c1_terminalWealth + c2_skew + c4_deltaCI. The asymmetric structure did NOT escape the prior study's trade-off — the win-rate-by-horizon signal + corr(holdDays,return)=−0.30 was SELECTION, not a harvestable inefficiency (losers held longer because the SIGNAL kept them in). No production change — emergent signal-side PEAD exit STANDS; closes the PEAD exit-rule research thread (both 6/17 horizon + 6/22 asymmetric confirm the emergent exit is correct). Provenance firewall held (in-sample-generated hypothesis still disconfirmed honestly under multi-baseline + survivorship-stress). Pure info-layer, never touched modifier/Kelly/entry/exit. data/backfill/pead_asymmetric_exit_2026-06-22.json. Rule #10: no iterate (different rule/param = NEW pre-reg). Lock memo project_pead_asymmetric_exit_prereg_2026_06_17.md.

The backfill ran and the hypothesis failed its pre-registered bar. It is recorded and retired — not re-tested without a fresh, separately-registered hypothesis.