I’m sure you’ve all seen advertisements of trading systems that have 95% winning trades. And traders tend to get all excited when they see a high win rate. But while having a high win rate is nice, it can also be a very misleading performance metric.
The winning rate tells you how much percent of the trades in a backtest (or real past trades) have been winning trades. So if you have 100 trades in total, and 75 of those trades closed with a profit, you have a winning rate of 75%. Now the first thing to notice here is how those winning trades are defined. Are breakeven-trades included? What about commissions? If you have 100% winning trades in the E-Mini Dow Future and each of those trades was closed at 1 tick profit ($5) and you pay $7.50 per round turn, you actually lost money even if you hit your profit target 100% of the time.
Which leads us to the next fact. And that is that without knowing how much money was made on the winning trades vs. the losing trades, the winning rate is completely useless. Here’s an extreme example. Let’s say you have 90 out of 100 winning trades, a winning rate of 90%. Sounds great right? But what if on average you had an average profit of $100 per winning trade ($100 x 90 = $9000) but an average loss of 1000$ per losing trade ($1000 x 10 = $10000)? Right you have lost $1000 even with a winning rate of 90%. Of course this also works the other way around, if you only have 10% winners, but those are 10 times the size of your 90% losing trades, you’ll come out ahead!
Here things get interesting from a psychological point of view. Most traders are not ready to trade a strategy that only wins just 10 out of 100 times. Even if it’s numbers look amazing in the long run and it’s a really good system. Most traders simply can’t deal with this as it’s going to have long flat periods and you can easily have 10 and often 20 or more small losing trades in a row.
On the other side usually the drawdowns will be much steeper trading a system with a high win rate. When it finally hits those big losing trades, months of profits can be destroyed within a single day.
So to sum this up, the winning % is a key number to watch out for but it’s far less important than most traders think and without additional information completely useless. So you shouldn’t get all excited if you see a very high winning rate right away.
All of the 99% winning trade systems that try to capture a few pips on each trade I’ve seen in the past have blown up sooner or later. And any such systems that will come up in the future will end up in the same way. It’s always a ticking time bomb and the longer it’s been running and making money - the higher the odds are it will implode soon.
CFTC RULE 4.41 - HYPOTHETICAL OR SIMULATED PERFORMANCE RESULTS HAVE CERTAIN LIMITATIONS. UNLIKE AN ACTUAL PERFORMANCE RECORD, SIMULATED RESULTS DO NOT REPRESENT ACTUAL TRADING. ALSO, SINCE THE TRADES HAVE NOT BEEN EXECUTED, THE RESULTS MAY HAVE UNDER-OR-OVER COMPENSATED FOR THE IMPACT, IF ANY, OF CERTAIN MARKET FACTORS, SUCH AS LACK OF LIQUIDITY. SIMULATED TRADING PROGRAMS IN GENERAL ARE ALSO SUBJECT TO THE FACT THAT THEY ARE DESIGNED WITH THE BENEFIT OF HINDSIGHT. NO REPRESENTATION IS BEING MADE THAT ANY ACCOUNT WILL OR IS LIKELY TO ACHIEVE PROFIT OR LOSSES SIMILAR TO THOSE SHOWN.
Editors’ Picks
EUR/USD climbs toward 1.1800 on broad USD weakness
EUR/USD gathers bullish momentum and advances toward 1.1800 in the second half of the day on Tuesday. The US Dollar weakens and helps the pair stretch higher after the employment report showed that Nonfarm Payrolls declined by 105,000 in October before rising by 64,000 in November.
GBP/USD climbs to fresh two-month high above 1.3400
GBP/USD gains traction in the American session and trades at its highest level since mid-October above 1.3430. The British Pound benefits from upbeat PMI data, while the US Dollar struggles to find demand following the mixed employment figures and weaker-than-forecast PMI prints, allowing the pair to march north.
Japanese Yen seems poised to appreciate further; awaits BoJ decision on Friday
The Japanese Yen maintains its bid tone through the first half of the European session on Tuesday which, along with a bearish US Dollar, keeps the USD/JPY pair depressed below the 155.00 psychological mark. The growing acceptance that the Bank of Japan will raise interest rates this week turns out to be a key factor behind the safe-haven JPY's outperformance.
Editors’ Picks
EUR/USD climbs toward 1.1800 on broad USD weakness
EUR/USD gathers bullish momentum and advances toward 1.1800 in the second half of the day on Tuesday. The US Dollar weakens and helps the pair stretch higher after the employment report showed that Nonfarm Payrolls declined by 105,000 in October before rising by 64,000 in November.
GBP/USD climbs to fresh two-month high above 1.3400
GBP/USD gains traction in the American session and trades at its highest level since mid-October above 1.3430. The British Pound benefits from upbeat PMI data, while the US Dollar struggles to find demand following the mixed employment figures and weaker-than-forecast PMI prints, allowing the pair to march north.
Gold recovers above $4,300 as markets react to weak US data
Gold trades in positive above $4,300 after spending the first half of the day under bearish pressure. XAU/USD capitalizes on renewed USD weakness after the jobs report showed that the Unemployment Rate climbed to 4.6% in November and the PMI data revealed a loss of growth momentum in the private sector in December.
US Retail Sales virtually unchanged at $732.6 billion in October
Retail Sales in the United States were virtually unchanged at $732.6 billion in October, the US Census Bureau reported on Tuesday. This print followed the 0.1% increase (revised from 0.3%) recorded in September and came in below the market expectation of +0.1%.
Ukraine-Russia in the spotlight once again
Since the start of the week, gold’s price has moved lower, but has yet to erase the gains made last week. In today’s report we intend to focus on the newest round of peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, whilst noting the release of the US Employment data later on day and end our report with an update in regards to the tensions brewing in Venezuela.
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