How to Analyze Your Trades: 12 Metrics That Matter - TradeSimple

1. The win-rate trap

Ask most traders how they are doing and they will tell you their win rate. “I win about 60% of my trades.” It sounds like the headline number. It is not. Win rate on its own tells you almost nothing about whether you are making money.

Here is the problem. Imagine two traders. The first wins 70% of the time but her losses are three times the size of her wins. The second wins only 40% of the time but his winners are four times the size of his losers. The second trader is far more profitable, even though on paper he “loses more often.” Win rate hides the thing that actually matters: how much you make when you are right versus how much you lose when you are wrong.

The trap in one line

A high win rate with a low average win and a large average loss is how accounts bleed out slowly. You feel like a winner on most days and still end the quarter down.

The way out is to stop looking at any single number and start reading a small set of metrics together. That is what this guide teaches: which numbers to compute, how to read each one, and what to change when it is bad. If you have not set up a place to record trades yet, start with the trading journal guide and come back here.

2. What you need before you start

Analysis is only as good as the data underneath it. Before any metric means anything, every closed trade needs a few fields recorded honestly. If you are missing these, fix your logging first.

Entry and exit price: The actual fills, not the price you wish you had gotten. This is the spine of every calculation.
Position size: Shares, contracts, or lots. Without size you cannot convert price moves into real dollars.
Initial risk (your stop): Where your stop was at entry. This is what lets you express results in R-multiples instead of raw dollars, which is the single most useful thing you can do.
Setup or strategy tag: The reason you took the trade: breakout, pullback, reversal, news, and so on. Without a tag you cannot segment, and segmentation is where the edges live.
Timestamps: Entry and exit time. These unlock time-of-day, day-of-week, and hold-time analysis.
Symbol and direction: What you traded and whether you were long or short.

Six fields. That is the floor. The trading journal template gives you a ready-made structure so you are not inventing columns from scratch.

3. The three numbers that decide everything

Before the full list of twelve, internalize three numbers. If you only ever compute these, you will already be ahead of most traders. Everything else refines the picture around them.

Expectancy

Expectancy is the average dollar amount you can expect to make or lose per trade over the long run. It is the closest thing to a single verdict on your edge.

expectancy = (win% x average win) - (loss% x average loss)

If you win 45% of the time, your average win is $400, and your average loss is $200, then expectancy is(0.45 x 400) - (0.55 x 200) = 180 - 110 = $70 per trade. Positive expectancy means the system pays you to keep taking trades. Negative expectancy means volume is working against you and the fix is the system, not the position size.

Average R-multiple

An R-multiple expresses each result as a multiple of the risk you took. If you risked $100 and made $250, that trade was +2.5R. If you lost your full stop, it was -1R. Once every trade is in R, you can compare a tiny scalp and a big swing on the same scale, and your expectancy in R tells you the quality of your edge independent of position size.

Profit factor

profit factor = gross profit / gross loss. Add up every winning trade, add up every losing trade, divide. Above 1.0 you are net profitable. Around 1.5 is solid. Above 2.0 is strong. Below 1.0 you are losing money and no amount of discipline on entries will save a system that does not clear this bar.

Why R changes how you see everything

Once results are in R, “a bad day” becomes “-3R” and “a great week” becomes “+12R.” You stop reacting to dollar swings and start reading the shape of your edge. Dollars follow from R and size; R is the part you actually control.

4. The 12 metrics that matter

Here is the full set. Read them as a group, not one at a time. Each one answers a different question, and it is the combination that reveals whether you have an edge and where it comes from.

1. Expectancy

Average profit or loss per trade. The single best verdict on your edge. Positive means the system pays you to keep trading.

2. Average R-multiple

Your average result expressed as a multiple of risk. Lets you compare every trade on one scale, regardless of size.

3. Profit factor

Gross profit divided by gross loss. Above 1.0 is profitable, above 1.5 is solid, above 2.0 is strong.

4. Win rate

Percentage of trades that closed green. Useful only alongside average win and average loss, never alone.

5. Average win vs. average loss

The payoff ratio. A 2:1 average win-to-loss means you can be right less than half the time and still profit.

6. Largest loss

Your single worst trade. If it dwarfs your average loss, your stops are slipping and one trade can undo weeks of work.

7. Max drawdown

The deepest peak-to-trough drop in your equity. This is the pain you must survive to reach the average.

8. Average hold time

How long you stay in trades. Reveals whether you are cutting winners early or letting losers run.

9. Setup win rate

Win rate and expectancy broken out by strategy. Shows which setups earn and which just keep you busy.

10. Time-of-day / day-of-week

Performance sliced by hour and weekday. Almost everyone has hours and days that quietly cost them money.

11. Symbol / instrument performance

P&L by ticker or contract. Often one or two symbols carry your account and one or two drain it.

12. MAE / MFE

Maximum adverse and favorable excursion: how far trades went against and in your favor before you closed. Tunes your stops and targets.

A thirteenth, honorable mention: the standard deviation of your R-multiples, or consistency. Two systems with the same expectancy but different variance feel completely different to trade. Lower variance is easier to hold to.

5. How to read each metric

A number is only useful if you know what to do when it looks wrong. Here is the practical read on the ones that trip people up, and the lever to pull when each is bad.

Win rate feels high but expectancy is low: Your average loss is too big relative to your average win. The fix is on the exit side: tighter stops, or letting winners run further. Do not chase a higher win rate, chase a better payoff ratio.
Profit factor below 1.0: The system is unprofitable as a whole. Segment before you scrap it: often one setup or one symbol is dragging the rest below water. Cut the dead weight and recompute.
Average win close to average loss: You are cutting winners too early. Look at MFE: if trades routinely run well past where you exit, your targets are leaving money on the table.
Average loss larger than your planned risk: You are not honoring stops. This is a discipline problem, not a strategy problem, and it is the fastest thing to fix and the most damaging to ignore.
Average hold time much shorter on winners than losers: The classic mistake: you snatch small profits and nurse big losses. You are holding exactly backwards. Winners deserve room, losers deserve the door.
One setup with strong expectancy, others near zero: Do more of the one that works and less of the rest. Most traders find that a large share of their profit comes from a small share of their setups.

The exit is where the money is

Most traders obsess over entries. But the metrics above almost always point at exits: stops too loose, targets too tight, winners cut early, losers held late. When a number looks wrong, check the exit first.

6. The risk side: drawdown, MAE and MFE

Profit metrics tell you whether the system works. Risk metrics tell you whether you can survive long enough to see it work. Ignore these and a good system can still blow up an account.

Largest loss and max drawdown

Your largest single loss should sit close to your planned risk. If your typical risk is 1R but your largest loss is -4R, one trade is undoing several weeks of good work, and it means stops are slipping in exactly the moments they matter most. Max drawdown, the deepest peak-to-trough fall in your equity curve, is the emotional test you have to pass. If your worst drawdown is 30% and you know you would abandon the system at 20%, the position size is wrong even if the expectancy is right.

MAE and MFE

Maximum adverse excursion (MAE) is how far a trade moved against you before you closed it. Maximum favorable excursion (MFE) is how far it moved in your favor. These two are the most underused metrics in trading, and they tune your stops and targets with evidence instead of guesswork.

If your winners rarely dip more than 0.5R against you before working, your stop at 1R may be wider than it needs to be. A tighter stop would cut your average loss without costing you many winners.
If your MFE shows trades routinely run to 3R but you keep exiting at 1.5R, your target is leaving half the move on the table. Trailing further would lift your average win.
If losing trades show large adverse excursion early, the setup may simply be bad, or your entry timing is off and you are getting in before the move is ready.

7. Segmentation: where the edges hide

This is the chapter that changes how people trade. Your overall numbers are an average, and averages hide everything interesting. A system with a mediocre blended expectancy is very often one great setup being dragged down by two bad ones. You only see it when you slice the data.

Slice your trade history four ways and compute expectancy for each bucket:

1
By setup
Group every trade by its strategy tag. Compute win rate, average R, and expectancy per setup. You will almost always find one or two setups carrying you and one or two you should retire.
2
By symbol or instrument
Some tickers or contracts fit your style and some fight it. If one symbol is deeply negative across dozens of trades, that is not variance, that is a mismatch. Stop trading it.
3
By time of day
Break results into the market open, midday, and the close. Most traders have a window where they make almost all their money and a window where they give it back out of boredom.
4
By day of week
Monday openings and Friday afternoons behave differently from the middle of the week. Some traders find an entire weekday is quietly negative for them.

The 80/20 of your P&L

When you segment honestly, most traders discover that a small handful of setups, symbols, and hours produce nearly all of their profit, and a different handful produce nearly all of their losses. The edge was always there. It was just buried in the blended average.

The action after segmenting is simple and hard: do more of what pays and less of what does not. Cutting your three worst buckets often does more for your P&L than any new strategy you could learn.

8. Time-of-day and day-of-week

Time deserves its own chapter because it is the segmentation people skip and the one that pays off fastest. You do not need a new skill to benefit from it. You just need to stop trading during the hours that lose you money.

Tag every trade with its entry hour and weekday, then group by those. Look for the pattern where your expectancy is strongly positive in one window and negative in another. Common findings:

The first 30 to 60 minutes after the open carry most of the day’s edge for momentum traders, and midday chop quietly gives it back.
Late-afternoon trades taken out of boredom or to “make back” a red morning are frequently the worst bucket in the whole log.
One weekday, often the one where you trade tired or distracted, can be negative on its own while every other day is green.

The fix costs nothing. If your 12:00 to 14:00 trades have negative expectancy across a hundred trades, do not trade then. You just improved your blended expectancy without learning anything new.

9. A review routine that sticks

Metrics only compound if you look at them on a schedule. Analysis you do once and forget is a hobby. A routine is what turns it into an edge. Keep it light enough that you actually do it.

Daily (5 minutes)

At the close, log every trade while the details are fresh, entries, exits, stop, setup tag, and a one-line note on whether you followed your plan. Do not analyze yet. Just capture clean data. Dirty data is the only thing that can break the whole system.

Weekly (20 minutes)

Once a week, compute the core numbers for the week: expectancy, average R, profit factor, win rate, and your best and worst trade. Read your plan-adherence notes. Ask one question: did I lose money because the setup failed, or because I broke my own rules? Those are completely different problems with different fixes.

Monthly (45 minutes)

Once a month, do the segmentation. Break the month down by setup, symbol, time of day, and weekday. Compare to last month. Pick exactly one change for next month, retire a setup, avoid an hour, tighten a stop, and write it down. One change, tested over the next month, beats ten changes you cannot untangle later.

Do not over-tune

Change one variable per month. If you adjust your stop, your target, and your setup mix all at once and your results move, you will never know which change did it. Analysis without controlled changes is just anxiety with a spreadsheet.

10. By hand vs. a journal that computes it

You can do all of this in a spreadsheet, and for your first few dozen trades you probably should, because building the formulas yourself teaches you what each metric means. But there is an honest catch: it gets painful fast.

By the time you have a few hundred trades, computing expectancy per setup, per symbol, and per hour by hand is hours of work every month, and one broken formula quietly corrupts a conclusion you then act on. Most traders stop doing the analysis long before they stop trading, and then they are flying blind again.

A journal that computes these automatically removes the excuse. You log the trade once and every metric in this guide, expectancy, R-multiples, profit factor, MAE and MFE, and the full segmentation by setup, symbol, and time, recalculates itself. The work becomes reading the numbers instead of building them. That is the whole point of TradeSimple: see your reports and what each plan includes.

The test

If you can answer “which of my setups has the best expectancy, and what hour costs me the most money?” in under ten seconds, your analysis is working. If it takes an afternoon of spreadsheet work, it will not survive a busy month, and analysis you skip is analysis you do not have.

11. Next steps

Analyzing your trades is not about finding one magic number. It is about reading a small set of metrics together, in R and in dollars, and then slicing them by setup, symbol, and time until your real edge, and your real leaks, become obvious. Do that on a schedule, change one thing at a time, and your P&L follows.

Start by making sure your data is clean with the trading journal guide, grab the journal template to structure your log, and when the spreadsheet gets heavy, let a journal do the math for you. Start a free trial and log your next trade properly.