How important is the win percentage?

What instruments and what underlying do you trade?
Equities and ETFs, these strategies run at around 40%
And options, here it's a split vote - selling runs at around 65% and buying at around 30%
But again due to the explosive potential of buying options, the winners make up for the losers
 
This is a brilliant thread, thx to all for posting,, and OP for bringing it up. It's so important. Really wish I knew all this 20 years ago.

You guys are all making great points.

Truth is there's no single correct answer, it depends on individual trading styles.

Perfect analogy is winning poker players, world champions like Ivey, Esfandiari and Negreanu all play uniquely.

There's a few things we can likely all agree on like avoiding big stops. Super insights, valuable tips, thx
I agree, I'm happy everyone is contributing, i will use the pearls of wisdom here for my next article on the topic, wish I could use them for the initial one provided in the link of the 1st post, but will definitely use for the 2nd one,
a humble thanks for everyone
 
The issue is not just the strategy itself...its the entire trading plan.

Thus, you can have a strategy that loses 50% (wins 50%) but if its within a trading plan that's able to exploit the wins for example keeping the losing trades small and the winning trades big...

Thus, we had an ET member with like +70% winners but overall he lost money. In fact, he blew up (margin call) because he allowed his losing trades to be huge losers until the final one was a loser he couldn't return back from.

He didn't believe in using stops.

Therefore, if your trading plan involves minimizing the losses in the losing trades while allowing the winners to run their course to profit targets...you essentially have a winning trading plan with a questionable trade strategy.

Regardless, win/loss ratio is still an important statistic to maintain with other important statistics.

wrbtrader
What are you trading? What's the time frame?
 
And a fifth trade averaging down long. Another winner. Purple horizontal line was my initial entry level follow it to the left end you see the green triangle entry. The lower green triangles were additional averaging down entries. The righthand side red triangle is my exit of all contracts at one whack. Once I get at least 1 tick profit on my initial entry I am looking at exiting. Avoid greed. It will lower a win rate.


5trades 5 winners.jpg
 
I agree completely on the average loss /average win issue, that's what I tried to explain in the article provided in the link at the primary post, regarding MAE & MFE I never really saw these as major contribution to my understanding of a trading strategy but maybe I'm missing something here, I would love to hear how these risk metrics contribute to your understanding and how you use them to improve a trading strategy, thanks

Depending on the improvement rabbit hole depth you care to travel, MAE and MFE can be useful for upping performance of overall trade method/style, specific setups, specific entry and exit techniques, and even market environments.

Personally I analyze my primary overall method, which is volume correlated to PA, not the other way around. I also make note of environment on a daily basis, not by trade. The environment serves as a "filter" of sorts... this is how the trade method, based on real-time analysis and actions performs in different environments, and is now comparable to actual profit/loss, wins and losses. Improvement in entry/exit/stops becomes possible!!

Its a simple glance for learning how much gets left on the table (how good is the exit signal), as well as how much drawdown if any, is necessary (how good is the entry signal). Like I said... how far down the rabbit hole do you want to go? My trade parameters/expectations are different with a VIX around 30 vs 15. My trade parameters/expectations are different in summer, etc, etc, etc. MAE/MFE gives me that insight.

I am an independent, flat EOD, full-time futures trader.
 
I draw a lot of lines. I can never tell which line price will react to but Price ALWAYS reacts to some line whether it be support or resistance.

Right price is trading in a bull channel and in a nested triangle at the Apex so it is in the BO mode. It simple cannot stay at the Apex. I will watch and see what it does.

5trades 5 winners lines.jpg
 
What are you trading? What's the time frame?

Emini ES futures but I get my trade signals from other markets to trade the Emini ES.

1min (high volatility market conditions)

2min, 3min, 5min, 15min and 30min normal trading conditions

wrbtrader
 
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Automated traders need to chime in here. Some of them do very well with ridiculously low win %. Necessary win % is dependent on the methodology structure.

since you asked, the win ratio depends on the duration your measuring, yes there is time we, or
Perhaps i have ultra low winning % but the loss is so small where you can afford to get hit 20 times and the one trade that makes it covers all the losses. It also depends on if your measuring over all performance or per instrument measurement, most of the time at least for me i do NOT heavily calculate this ratio because out if 10 hands dealt there is no way to know which one is winner or loser and again duration gets involved the winners/loser ratio can again be affected, being systematic i take every signal. Winner or losers i cant and i do not input my feeling and i follow it no matter what , After recent mayhems and wild swings, ive changed my systems to trade only instruments with options, because systematically you cant accurately calculate losses forward looking if the instrument gaps against you but you can if your buying options. This caused a massive shuffle in instruments being traded

so whaat the win ratio? Depends on duration and depends if your talking entire systems calculation or per instrument calculation but as others mentioned here its not as important as knowing how much you can lose in the worse of the worse situations

most importantly this to ANY trader, automated, systematic, or discretionary or whatever is
Position size because even if you got 90% winning ratio you can fuck it up if you take a larger position or smaller on that one losing trade which obviously you wont know in advance this happens because people tend to be emotionally connected to an instrument or think its too cheap (like me in crude oil) or too expensive (like me in palladium) but worse sometimes its happening and they do NOT knwo at all in my experience most traders maybe not here hardly know what ot means to systemize position size, you ask them what size you took on this and that and u get two different answers and if u ask why they be like oh this stock is 20
Bucks and this one is 80 bucks yet you will
Find the size they took on the 20
Dollar stock is 3 times higher than the position they took on the 80
Dollar stock

this can fuck it up all

edit: even the same amount of contracts all the time is not the same size, because the value of those contracts notional changes daily even though margin might not right away, like the es for example, 2 contract when its at 3000 is not the same as 2 contracts when its at 2500
 
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I really think that it needs to be greater than 50 percent for most traders. I say that because most traders have rather imperfect position management. Another factor is that for most trading systems the winners are not substantially larger than the losers.

options can change that drastically
 
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