The 1R/3R will be a loser, because you cap your winners. The big trendfollowing CTAs (and the Turtles) have a similar strategy, only it's: cap losers at -1R, but don't cap winners. The win rate is ~40% (sometimes less), but, over a LONG (emphasis on LONG) period of time, the overall strategy is profitable, for two reasons: 1) Extreme diversification among 50-100 different contracts with low correlation to each other; and 2) the uncapped winners allow huge winners, like 20R-30R. The P/L distribution has a long, thin tail on the right side. In fact, the top 1-5 trades usually make up the entire profit for a given year. All the other trades cancel each other out.