Hi
I am curious to get an idea of experienced, “successful” traders win/loss ratio and minimum RR on trades. It doesn’t matter what your definiton of success is, just as long as you win more money than you lose and use a SL to calculate your risk.
It is simply out of interest as I get the feeling that successful strategies of the past with 70% w/l and rr of 3:1 have dissapeared due to market conditions in the past few years.
Hello @DreamerROC
I dont consider myself to be a succesful trader, but i’ll throw my 2 cents in…Hope you don’t mind.
I divide my win/loss ratio into different categories that can be tricky to explain because I use multiple entries and scale in/out. However, if you simply want to know what % of the time my trades profit, the answer is aprox 25%.
I also calculate my RR a bit different. I dont use a TP and I’ll move my SL up while scaling in/out instead of capping profit. As a result, I don’t have an initial RR because although I know my potential max loss, my potential profit is unknown at first. Because of this, I measure my RR post trade as realized profit vs initial max risk.
On a side note, i’ve never met any traders personally with a 70% W/L and a 3:1 RR, but i’ve met a couple of succesful traders with a winning % below 35%.
1 huge win can cover many small losses is the theory.
Best of luck to you 
Thanks for the reply.
I was wondering if you could elaborate on the successful traders you have met with a winning% of 35%.
If you have a winning % of 33 and a third%. You would win 1 in 3 trades. If you risk the same amount of money on each trade, you would need a 3:1 RR to make a profit of 1 x their risk. If their RR wasn’t 3:1, what was it? or where they martingaling or risking different amounts, using different strategies?
I myself am in the range of 68% currently but I have seen traders at 40% win pct that had great accounts. You might be backtesting an idea and risking cents and lose those trades & that’ll dampen your pct. My R:R depends honestly usually 2:1 - 4:1 all depends on the pair I’m trading as each has its own volatility.
Low risk trades, with low winning %, but winners are occasionaly huge homeruns.
No initial RR because these traders dont cap profits.
Peter Brandt would be a good example (never met him😁). His winning % is around 25%, but he’s a succesful trader. He’s a pure chartist.
Winning % is over rated and too much emphasis on w/l is one of the main reasons why traders struggle to find a strategy.
RR > W/L all day every day
I lose most of my trades if that helps.
I see. They let their profits run so when they win, they win big, Thanks.
That is great. May I ask, how many trades do you take per week? and do you stick to the majors?
Bleh it depends on my system honestly. Last week I had 7 trades & this week I still have 0 live trades currently, but I also missed out on one and I’m trying to bank on FOMC meeting tomorrow.
Sounds good. I think 1 a day on average is enough to kep me in the game. Do you trade during specific sessions and on specific timeframes?
Yes 1hr is my go to but I use that with 15M & 4HR to get a better picture.
Also my pairs that I truly love is USD/JPY & USD/CAD
After that I dabble with AUD/USD, EUR/USD, GBP/USD but again my main money makers are the first 2.
I am pretty similar. I trade those pairs and others on the 1 hour. Basically, I trade all the fixed spread pairs on FXPro. I have been trading 7 years chasing those 3:1 RR. I haven’t got there. However, 1:1 seems more relaible for lately. I don’t like it but it has been working.
Yeah I don’t really go for the large R:R unless I’m either certain I’m continuing an uptrend or a major market mover (news, reports, etc) and even that I’m trailing manually to keep my profits in the SL range after.
An extreme emphasis on risk reduction when it comes to trade selection/execution/management is the key to this style of trading.
Sometimes you won’t hit any home runs the entire year but if you hit a couple of triples, a few doubles and a lot of singles…your .250.to .300 batting average will lead to many RBI’s. You want the 70-75% of your outs to be “quality outs”. You can even drive a few runs in while hitting directly into an out. Make good contact by perfecting the timing of your swing and knowing the tendancies of the opposing pitcher by watching lots of film and studying his pitch chart.The key is to avoid strikeouts at all cost by being as selective as possible when it comes to what pitches you swing at and how hard you swing at them.
Your welcome @DreamerROC, I wish you many runs batted in
@MannyPaq…greatest reply ever!!
I was eating when I read this and almost chocked to death from laughter! My wife was getting ready to do the heimlech on me.
Your awesome, I wish you many pips and much success.
I think he just meant his win loss ratio is high but wins still greater than losses…hopefully.
I think…that those high RR trades are so rare that I jump in too early and it results in too many losses for me. I believe that to be a top trader and trade others money, this won’t work. I know because I was once being monitored to be a “Supertrader” for FXPro but they no longer have this signal service option. At the time, I had a successful strategy but it took days and sometimes weeks for an entry signal and to be a Supertrader required about 30 trades a month if I remember correctly.
I’d have to know more about your basic premise - that market conditions have changed and this has undermined successful strategies.
What changes do you see? What do they look like on the charts?
My original post says that I get that feeling and not that I see any changes. As for why I feel that way, well a variety of reasons and suspicions which you can read about if you have read my replies and posts in other threads.