Win Rate

Win rateis the percentage of your trades that close in profit. It’s the easiest stat to compute and the most-quoted one on Twitter - which is precisely why it’s the most misleading number in trading. A 70% win rate sounds elite. A 35% win rate sounds bad. Both can describe a profitable trader and both can describe a broke one.

The formula is trivial: Win Rate = (Winning Trades ÷ Total Trades) × 100%. What it doesn’t tell you is how big the winners are relative to the losers - and that’s the entire game.

Win rate has an inverse relationship with reward-to-risk

High-win-rate systems usually take small profits and bigger losses - they scalp little wins and let stops do the cleanup. Low-win-rate systems usually take asymmetric winners - they catch trends and accept frequent small losses while waiting. Neither approach is wrong. They’re different rides for different temperaments.

Typical zones: 30–45% for trend / breakout systems, 50–65% for mean-reversion / scalping, 70%+for very tight-stopped intraday with quick targets. Anyone claiming 90% in real money over >100 trades is either cherry-picking or hiding the tails.

What to look at instead

Win rate combined with average win / average loss gives you expectancy, the number that actually compounds. Win rate combined with bet size gives you profit factor. Win rate on its own is a marketing stat - useful for advertising a course, not for managing real capital.