# 52-Week-High Momentum (campaign): a killed candidate

**Verdict:** KILLED  **Stage:** deployed gauntlet  
**Identity:** `eq_52whigh`

The one AlphaMax construction variant whose cheap screen cleared the bar (t 2.01 vs plain momentum's 1.73), so we honored the pre-registration and ran the FULL deployed-path walk-forward. It KILLED: net Sharpe -0.289 (WORSE than plain 12-1's own -0.049 on the same harness), DSR 0.00, and OOS correlation +0.42 to plain momentum — neither better nor genuinely different. The frozen 12-1 build stays. KILLED at the gauntlet.

## Why it was worth testing

This one reached deployment before it was killed, which makes it the most expensive kind of kill and the most important to publish in full. A candidate that passed on the evidence available at the time and failed on better evidence later is not a process failure to be hidden; refusing to withdraw it would be.

## The result

| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Screen net Sharpe | -0.2890 |

## What this does and does not say

It says this configuration, on this data, net of the costs we charge, did not clear the bar it pre-registered. It does not say the underlying economic effect does not exist, that no implementation of it works, or that someone with different data or different execution would reach the same conclusion. A null is evidence about a test, not a proof about a market.

It also does not say the trial was free. Every hypothesis tested raises the deflated-Sharpe hurdle for every sleeve already in the book, including the ones that survived. That is why the kill count is published beside the survivor count rather than behind it.