Winning trades ÷ total closed trades. Also called: hit rate, success rate, WIN RATE. Finviro's term: “Win Rate”.
What this ratio is
Win Rate (Win Rate) is the share of your trades that closed in profit out of all your trades. Sixty winners out of a hundred means 60%. It's the best-known number in a trading journal, and the most tempting to misread when taken alone.
Why it is never enough
Because profitability is win rate multiplied by the average win and loss: a 80% rate with small wins and huge losses is a loser ($80 comes in and $200 goes out in every cycle of twenty trades), while a 35% rate with wins three times the loss builds wealth. The full formula: (rate × average win) minus (the opposite rate × average loss).
Its inverse link to your approach
Every approach buys its win rate somewhere. Premium sellers buy high rates with rare but large losses, and trend traders accept rates below half in exchange for winners that run. No rate is "good" on its own. What matters is a balanced pair of rate and payoff that fits the trader's nerves.
Hypothetical example
Two traders: the first has a 75% rate with an average win of $100 and loss of $350. His result is negative despite the apparent "success". The second has 40% with a win of $400 and loss of $120. His result is $+88 per trade even though he loses most days. The full journal completely reverses the surface verdict.
Common mistake
Improving the rate by killing the payoff: if you take profits early and hold losers "until they come back", your rate goes up and your math falls apart. A high rate built this way is a pleasant road to slow ruin.
Why it is not enough alone
Profitability is win rate multiplied by the average win and the average loss: 80% with small wins and huge losses, and 35% with a 3-to-1 payoff that compounds. That's why a win rate is never read without the payoff beside it. Improving it by taking profits early and letting losses run is a pleasant road to slow ruin.
Where to see it on the platform
The trading journal calculates it together with the average win, the average loss and the full result, so the rate is never read alone.
The trading journal calculates it together with the average win, the average loss and the full result.
