Trading metric
Win rate
Win rate is the most quoted trading statistic and the most misread. On its own it tells you almost nothing about whether you make money — and chasing it directly is how disciplined traders go broke.
What it is
Win rate is the share of your trades that close in profit: winning trades divided by total trades, expressed as a percentage. Win twelve of twenty trades and your win rate is 60%.
It feels like the headline number, but it is only half a sentence. A 60% win rate is excellent if your winners are larger than your losers and worthless if a few outsized losses swallow the gains. Win rate has to be read next to your average win and average loss — the same pairing that defines risk-reward and expectancy.
The deeper trap is that win rate is easy to inflate by trading badly. Cut every winner the moment it is green and let losers run hoping they come back, and your win rate climbs while your account bleeds. A rising win rate is only good news if your average loss is not rising with it.
How to measure it
The calculation is trivial. The discipline is counting every trade — including the scratches and the ones you would rather forget — over a sample large enough to mean something.
Win rate = winning trades ÷ total trades × 100
- 1
Count your closed trades over a defined period. Decide up front whether breakeven scratches count as wins, losses, or neither, and stay consistent.
- 2
Count how many closed in profit.
- 3
Divide wins by total trades and multiply by 100.
- 4
Record the average win and average loss next to it — win rate without those two numbers cannot tell you if you are profitable.
- 5
Only trust the figure over a meaningful sample. Twenty trades is noise; a few hundred starts to describe the strategy.
Worked example
Two traders both take 100 trades. Trader A wins 40 and runs 3:1 winners — clearly profitable at a 40% win rate. Trader B wins 70 but the 30 losers are each three times a winner — underwater at a 70% win rate. The higher win rate is the losing account. That is the whole lesson of the metric.
What good looks like
A "good" win rate is whatever pairs with your average win-to-loss size to produce positive expectancy. Trend-following strategies are often profitable at 35–45% because their winners dwarf their losers. Mean-reversion and scalping strategies may need 60% or more because their winners are small.
The healthier thing to watch is not the level but the relationship: is your win rate stable while your average win holds up? A win rate that only rises because you are cutting winners and nursing losers is a red flag dressed as progress.
35–45%
Normal and profitable for trend or breakout styles where winners are several times the size of losers.
55–65%
Typical for mean-reversion or scalping, where the edge is frequency and winners are modest.
Rising win rate, falling average win
A warning sign: you are likely banking small wins and avoiding closing losers. Profitable on paper, fragile in practice.
What moves it
Snatching profits to keep the streak
Closing winners early lifts your win rate and starves your average win. It feels like winning more; it is earning less per trade and capping the trades that were supposed to pay for the losers.
Refusing to take the loss
Holding losers past the stop, or moving the stop, converts would-be losses into temporary breakevens — until the one that does not come back. The win rate looks great right up to the trade that erases a month.
Revenge trading after a loss
Sizing up or forcing low-quality setups to "win it back" injects bad trades into the sample. The win rate dips, but the real damage is to expectancy and to the discipline that earns the next clean trade.
Judging a tiny sample
Drawing conclusions from ten or twenty trades treats variance as signal. A strategy can lose six in a row and still be sound; reacting to that as if the win rate "dropped" is how good systems get abandoned.
How Mettle tracks it
Mettle computes win rate on the dashboard from your imported fills, and — because the win rate alone lies — shows it next to the average win, average loss, and the behavior tags from your reviews.
Win rate is arithmetic on logged fills, so the dashboard derives it automatically across any date range or play.
It sits beside average win and average loss, so a win rate propped up by cut winners is visible instead of flattering.
The session review separates outcome from execution: a planned, well-executed loss is tagged as a good trade, so you stop optimizing the win rate at the expense of the process.
Execution quality is self-reported through your review tags — Mettle counts the habits you log, it does not grade your decisions for you.
FAQ
What is a good win rate for a trader?
There is no single good number. A profitable trend trader may sit near 40%, while a profitable scalper may need 65%. A win rate is only good if it pairs with your average win and loss to give positive expectancy. Targeting a win rate directly, with no regard to trade size, usually backfires.
Why does my win rate look high but I am still losing money?
Almost always because your losers are larger than your winners — usually from cutting winners early and letting losers run. A 70% win rate cannot save an account if the average loss is three times the average win. Look at win-to-loss size, not just the percentage.
Does Mettle calculate this automatically or do I report it?
The number itself is arithmetic on your logged fills, so Mettle computes it for you on the dashboard. What stays self-reported is the behavioral side — the tags and execution notes you add in review — because only you know whether you followed the plan. The copy never pretends otherwise.
Is Mettle free to start?
Yes. You get full access free for 14 days with no card. We only ask for a card once you have reviewed three sessions — after the product has proven it earns a place in your routine.
Read your win rate in context
Mettle shows win rate beside the numbers that make it meaningful, and ties each trade back to whether you followed your plan — not just whether it paid.
Start free — no cardMore trading metrics
Want the workflow behind the numbers? Read the matching guide.