What Do Your Trades Actually Prove?

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What do your trades actually prove?

You've got a win rate and a feeling about it. This works out what your record statistically supports, what it doesn't, and how many more trades it would take before the question is answerable at all.

Win rateWhat you actually recorded
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True win rate, 95% rangeWhere the real number probably sits, given this many trades
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Break-even win rateWhat you need, at your win and loss sizes, to come out flat
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Expectancy per tradeAverage dollars per trade across the whole record
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Win / loss size ratioAverage win divided by average loss
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What this sample can carryHow strongly you're entitled to state anything
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Trades before the answer is clearAt this win rate, when the range clears break-even
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    Why the range is the real answer

    Twelve winners out of twenty is a 60% win rate. It is also completely consistent with a system whose true win rate is 39%, and with one whose true win rate is 78%. Twenty trades cannot tell those apart, and no amount of confidence about your setup changes that.

    That's what the 95% range above is. It's not pessimism — it's the width of what your own data permits. The narrower it gets, the more your record is worth listening to, and the only thing that narrows it is more trades under the same rules.

    The comparison that matters is between the bottom of that range and your break-even win rate. If the bottom sits below break-even, your record has not yet ruled out a losing system. You might have an edge. You cannot say you do.

    How it's calculated

    win rate = winners / trades break-even win rate = average loss / (average win + average loss) expectancy = (win rate x average win) - ((1 - win rate) x average loss) 95% range = Wilson score interval on the win rate

    The range uses a Wilson score interval rather than the textbook normal one, because the normal interval misbehaves badly at exactly the sample sizes traders actually have. All of it runs in your browser. Nothing you type is sent anywhere, stored, or seen by us.

    What this can't tell you

    • Whether your rules are any good. It reads outcomes, not decisions. A record full of trades that broke your own rules will produce numbers that describe luck.
    • Anything about the future. Even a wide sample with a real edge is a description of the past. Markets change and edges decay.
    • Whether the sample is honest. If you left out the trades you'd rather forget, this arithmetic faithfully computes a flattering fiction.
    • Costs. Enter net figures after commissions and fees, or the expectancy above is optimistic.

    Also useful

    The one-page rulebookA free template for writing your rules down. Print it and sign it. Position size calculatorContracts, dollar risk, and the copied-account multiplier. Drawdown runway calculatorHow many maximum-loss days your account can survive.

    This is one number out of a system

    A calculator tells you where you stand. It can't stand next to you at 9:47 when a level you never mapped looks like the trade of the week.

    Fade & Ride is the written structure behind these numbers: two setups with gated checklists, a risk framework that survives copied accounts, printable worksheets and a journal that computes all of this for you, trade by trade.

    See what's inside — $59

    No subscription. Instant download. It's a structure for your own rules, not a set of signals — there are no trade calls in it.

    Educational tool only. This is arithmetic on numbers you type in — it is not investment advice, it does not predict anything, and it has no opinion on what you should trade. Trading futures involves substantial risk of loss and most people who try it lose money. Past results, including your own, do not predict future results. Verify contract specifications with your broker and your account rules with your firm; both change.