Keel's free win rate calculator takes your winning and losing trades and your average win and loss. It returns your win rate, the win rate you need to break even at your reward to risk, and what an average trade makes. A high win rate only pays if your wins are big enough next to your losses.
The average profit on a winning trade.
The average loss on a losing trade, as a positive number. Leave breakeven trades out of both counts.
You win 42.0% of trades and need 35.7% to break even at this reward to risk. On these averages the system makes money before fees.
+0.18R, in units of your average loss.
What does this mean for your sizing? Work out the Kelly bet size for these trades.
Your win rate is the share of your trades that made money. Count the trades that closed in profit, divide by every trade that closed in profit or loss, and multiply by 100.
win rate = winning trades / (winning trades + losing trades)42 winners and 58 losers is a 42% win rate. Trades that closed flat are best left out of both counts. Counting them as losses makes your win rate look worse than your trading is.
A win rate means nothing until you put it next to the size of your wins and losses. Reward to risk is your average win divided by your average loss. If you make $180 on an average winner and lose $100 on an average loser, your reward to risk is 1.8 to 1. The win rate where you exactly break even is:
breakeven win rate = 1 / (1 + reward to risk)At 1.8 to 1 that is 35.7%, so a 42% win rate clears it by about 6 points. The bigger your winners are next to your losers, the less often you need to be right.
| Reward to risk | Breakeven win rate |
|---|---|
| 0.5 : 1 | 66.7% |
| 1 : 1 | 50.0% |
| 1.5 : 1 | 40.0% |
| 2 : 1 | 33.3% |
| 3 : 1 | 25.0% |
| 4 : 1 | 20.0% |
Expectancy puts win rate and trade size into one number. It is what you make or lose on an average trade over many trades.
expectancy = win rate × average win − loss rate × average lossWith the numbers above: 0.42 × $180 − 0.58 × $100 = $17.60 a trade. Over 100 trades that is about $1,760 before costs. Divided by the average loss it is +0.18R, which lets you compare systems that trade different sizes. Profit factor says the same thing another way: gross profit divided by gross loss, where anything above 1 makes money.
A system that takes small profits quickly and lets losers run can win 70% of its trades and still lose. With $30 average wins and $100 average losses, 70 winners make $2,100 and 30 losers cost $3,000. The breakeven win rate at that reward to risk is 76.9%, so the system is short by about 7 points. Systems that buy dips and sell into small bounces often look like this. Trend followers tend to look the other way round: they lose more often than they win and make it up on the size of their winners. To plan the reward to risk of a single trade from its entry, stop and target, use the risk reward calculator.
Every number here is before costs unless your averages already include them. On perpetual futures each trade pays a fee on the way in and out, and positions pay or receive funding while they are open. Those costs shrink your average win and grow your average loss, which raises the win rate you need. A system with a thin margin over breakeven can lose it all to fees.
The other trap is too few trades. A win rate from 30 trades has a standard error of about 9 percentage points, so a system that looks like it wins 55% of the time may really win 46%. Use as many trades as you can get: a long trading journal, or a backtest over a long stretch of history, run with fees and funding. Then check how the result could vary with the Monte Carlo simulation. The risk of ruin calculator shows what a losing run would do to the account at your risk per trade.
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Divide your winning trades by your total winning and losing trades, then multiply by 100. 42 winners out of 100 trades is a 42% win rate. Leave trades that closed at breakeven out of both counts, or treat them consistently, so they do not drag the number down.
It depends on your reward to risk, the size of your average win divided by your average loss. The breakeven win rate is 1 / (1 + reward to risk). At 1:1 you need 50%, at 2:1 you need 33.3%, and at 3:1 you need 25%. Fees and funding push the real number a little higher.
It is if your winners are big enough. A 40% win rate breaks even at a reward to risk of 1.5:1 and makes money above it. At 2:1, a 40% win rate makes 0.2 times your average loss per trade before fees. Many trend-following systems win less than half their trades and still make money.
Not on its own. At 70% you need your average win to be at least 0.43 times your average loss to break even. A system that wins 70% of the time with $30 average wins and $100 average losses loses $9 a trade. Check the win rate against your reward to risk before you trust it.
Expectancy is what an average trade makes: win rate × average win minus loss rate × average loss. A 42% win rate with $180 average wins and $100 average losses has an expectancy of $17.60 a trade. Divide by the average loss to express it in R, here +0.18R.
More than most people use. With 30 trades, the standard error on a 50% win rate is about 9 points, so a measured result anywhere from about 32% to 68% fits a true 50%. With 200 trades the standard error drops to about 3.5 points. A backtest over a long history gives you far more trades than a short live record.
Not directly. Win rate and reward to risk tell you whether you have an edge. How much to risk is a separate choice: the Kelly criterion calculator turns the same inputs into a bet size, and the position size calculator turns a risk percentage into a position.