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Win rate and expectancy calculator

A 70% win rate can lose money and a 35% win rate can make it. Expectancy, what one average trade is worth, settles it; this calculator shows it next to your break-even win rate.

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Win rate and expectancy
As a positive number
Expectancy
+$49.50 per trade
35.0% win rate against a 26.3% break-even
Win rate 35.0%Break-even 26.3%
Win rate
35.0%
Break-even win rate
26.3%
Reward to risk
2.80 : 1
Profit factor
1.51
Net over these trades
+$4,950.00

Enter your count of winning and losing trades and the average size of each. Averages are enough.

The defaults show a 35% win rate that makes money, because win rate and reward-to-risk only mean something together.

Reading the four results

Expectancy is the one that decides. The other three explain why it came out where it did.

Expectancy
What one average trade is worth. Negative means more trades lose more.
Break-even win rate
Expectancy is zero here. At 3:1, winning a quarter of the time breaks even.
Reward to risk
Average win ÷ average loss. Raising it lowers the win rate you need.
Profit factor
Gross wins ÷ gross losses. Above 1.0 is profitable; it says nothing about the path.

Expectancy formula

With the defaults: 35 wins averaging $420 and 65 losses averaging $150 gives (0.35 × 420) − (0.65 × 150) = $49.50 a trade.

Formulas
win rate          = wins ÷ (wins + losses)
expectancy        = (win rate × avg win) − (loss rate × avg loss)
reward:risk       = avg win ÷ avg loss
break-even rate   = 1 ÷ (1 + reward:risk)
profit factor     = (wins × avg win) ÷ (losses × avg loss)

What expectancy leaves out

Expectancy is an average, and an average has no order. Two strategies with the same expectancy can survive very differently.

Sequence
Ten losses in a row at 1% is a 10% drawdown. An edge that needs a 40% drawdown is hard to stick with.
Sample size
A 60% win rate over thirty trades fits a 45% strategy with some luck. Thirty trades isn't evidence.
Costs
Averages before commission and slippage overstate the edge. $4 of costs on a $30 average trade is thirteen percent.

Measure it on real fills before risking money

Estimates from memory leave out the bad sessions. Run the strategy on a Quanify Paper account or a Tradovate demo account first, then work out win rate and expectancy from the fills it produced.

Published Quanify strategies show their backtest and live forward record, including win rate, Sharpe, Sortino and max drawdown. Ratios that need a sample are withheld when the data is thin: Sortino below three losing months, Sharpe below twelve months.

Browse published strategies
Questions

Common questions

Short answers to what traders ask first. Anything else, the Help Center has it.

How do you calculate win rate?

Divide winning trades by total trades. Thirty-five wins out of a hundred is 35%. On its own it doesn't tell you whether the strategy makes money.

What is expectancy in trading?

What one average trade is worth: (win rate × average win) − (loss rate × average loss). Positive means the process makes money over enough trades.

What is a good win rate for a trader?

It depends on reward-to-risk. At 3:1 you break even winning 25% of the time; at 0.5:1 you need 67%.

What is profit factor?

Gross winnings divided by gross losses. Above 1.0 is profitable, but a good profit factor can still hide a drawdown large enough to end an account.

Can I have a low win rate and still be profitable?

Yes, and many trend strategies work that way. Winning 35% of the time with an average win nearly three times the average loss gives positive expectancy. The hard part is sitting through the losing trades.

Is my data sent anywhere?

No. Everything is calculated on your device; nothing is transmitted or logged.

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