Win rate is the percentage of a master's trades that closed in profit. It is the number newcomers look at first, because it sounds like a grade — 80% good, 40% bad. It is also the number that tells you least about whether a master makes money, and the one most easily produced by the most dangerous habit in trading.
Expectancy: the number that matters
What a strategy earns per trade, on average, depends on two things: how often it wins, and how big the wins are relative to the losses. The combination is called expectancy:
Expectancy = (win rate × average win) − (loss rate × average loss)
Two masters:
| Master A | Master B | |
|---|---|---|
| Win rate | 90% | 35% |
| Average win | $40 | $300 |
| Average loss | $500 | $100 |
| Expectancy per trade | (0.90 × 40) − (0.10 × 500) = −$14 | (0.35 × 300) − (0.65 × 100) = +$40 |
Master A wins nine trades in ten and loses money. Master B loses two trades in three and makes it. The win rate pointed in exactly the wrong direction.
Why high win rates are suspicious
There is a simple way to produce a 90% win rate: take small profits quickly and refuse to take losses. Close every trade the moment it is $40 up; when a trade goes against you, hold it — widen the stop, or remove it — until it comes back. Most trades do come back, eventually, so the win rate is superb. The one in ten that does not come back is held until it costs $500, or until the margin runs out.
This is the pattern behind most of the spectacular blow-ups in copy trading: months of steady small wins, a win rate in the nineties, hundreds of followers, and then one week in which the whole record is erased. The profile looked perfect right up to the day it did not. The tell is in Recent Trades: the average win is tiny, the rare loss is enormous, and losing trades stay open far longer than winning ones.
Why low win rates can be fine
Trend followers — traders who try to catch large moves and cut small ones — often win only 30–40% of the time. They take many small losses probing for a trend and a few large wins when they find one. Their equity curve is jagged and psychologically hard to hold, but the expectancy is positive and, crucially, the losses are all small and known in advance. Nothing on their trade list is ever a catastrophe.
The ratio that pairs with win rate
Win rate only means something alongside the reward-to-risk ratio — the average win divided by the average loss. The two trade off against each other. The break-even line:
| Win rate | Reward:risk needed to break even |
|---|---|
| 30% | 2.33 : 1 |
| 40% | 1.50 : 1 |
| 50% | 1.00 : 1 |
| 60% | 0.67 : 1 |
| 75% | 0.33 : 1 |
| 90% | 0.11 : 1 |
A 90% master only needs to win 11 cents for every dollar risked to break even — which sounds easy, and is exactly why they end up risking ten dollars to make one. A 40% master needs to win $1.50 per dollar risked, which is a real edge if they have it and a visible failure if they do not.
What to read instead
- Max drawdown. The master's worst episode. A 90% win rate with a 45% drawdown is the blow-up pattern in numbers.
- Average win versus average loss, from Recent Trades. Take ten winners and ten losers and compare the dollar amounts. If the losers are several times larger, the win rate is being bought with risk.
- Holding time of losers versus winners. If losers are held for days and winners for minutes, the master is refusing losses.
- Return over drawdown. The ratio that says how much pain each unit of gain cost.
A realistic middle
Most durable masters sit between the two extremes: win rates of 50–65% with wins somewhat larger than losses — a reward-to-risk ratio of 1.2 to 2. That combination produces a positive expectancy, a tolerable drawdown, and an equity curve a copier can actually hold through. It is not exciting, and it is what a good track record usually looks like when you take the win rate and the loss size together. When a profile shows a number well outside that range in either direction, the question is simply what is producing it — a trend-following method (low win rate, fine) or a refusal to take losses (high win rate, not fine) — and Recent Trades answers it.
How the platform computes it
The win rate on an IDTraders profile is computed from closed trades: the share that closed with a positive result. It is honest and precise. It is simply a number that, on its own, does not answer the question copiers think it answers. Read it last, and read it with the loss column open beside it.
A 90% win rate is one bad trade from zero if the losses are ten times the wins. Read the size of the losses first; the win rate is the least important number on the page.
This article is education, not investment advice. Trading and copy trading in leveraged instruments carry a high risk of losing the funds you allocate. Read the Risk Disclosure.