How important is Risk:Reward ratios and Win:Loss ratios?

It’s a question that appears to have an obvious one word answer however the real question is, say you have a system:

Win = 4R
Loss = 1R

Wins = 33.3%
Losses = 66.6%

Over 100 trades you would make 66R. So is it bad that the Win:Loss ratio is less than 50%?

What about if your system has

Win = 0.5R
Loss = 1R

Wins = 80%
Losses = 20%

Over 100 trades you would make 20R. So is it bad that the R:R ratio is less than 1:1?

First off I think you mean 66.6%. You can’t have 33% wins and 99% losses. :smiley:

No, it is not bad to have any particular R:R ratio or win rate. Win:Loss ratios and R:R ratios are meaningless by themselves. The two numbers have to be taken together to mean anything. From your math I see you already know how to do the calculations.

The only danger in a system with a low win rate but high R:R is bad money management and drawdown. If you have a system that wins 10% of the time, yet is profitable overall, you need to be risking a very small amount of your balance per trade so you can survive the long losing streaks.

Remember a 10% win rate does not mean lose 9 win 1 over and over in a repeating pattern. It’s just a matter of time before you lose 15-20 trades (or more) in a row. If you’re risking 5% of your account per trade then you’re dead!

:o Thanks Phil, post amended!! :smiley:

If the trader has perfect discipline, then the only thing that matters is the expectancy ® of the trading method like you’ve shown in your examples.

But in the real world, most traders, especially the new ones, will have some problems with discipline. A high win rate could lead to “gamble” trades that are outside your entry criteria, simply because you are feeling so confident because winning streaks will be much more commonplace in your trading. A system with large, infrequent wins could create the “fear of loss” in the trader simply because he is seeing most of his trades turn to losses. He might eventually start taking profits early due to this fear.

In both these cases, the emotional strain of having the extremes in win rate or R:R ratio could erode the actual expectancy of the system. Discipline is always important of course, but in these situations it requires a much higher level of discipline to achieve the potential of the system.

I found this article that states my opinion on this better than I could:

Why the Risk-to-Reward Ratio is Overrated