Expectancy Explained
Win rate is the most prominently displayed and least informative statistic in trading. A strategy winning 70% of the time loses money if the losers are three times the size of the winners.
Every StaxInvesting article tagged expectancy · 2 posts.
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Win rate is the most prominently displayed and least informative statistic in trading. A strategy winning 70% of the time loses money if the losers are three times the size of the winners.
Win rate is the metric the trading-education industry loves to advertise, because a high percentage sounds like skill. It is also nearly useless on its own: a 90% win rate can lose money and a 40% win rate can be highly profitable, because what determines profitability is expectancy, the size of wins and losses, not how often you win. Here is the math, and why optimizing for win rate pushes you toward exactly the wrong strategies.