Win rate is the percentage of your trades that close in profit. It’s the easiest stat to compute and the most-quoted one on Twitter, which is precisely why it’s the most misleading number in trading. A 70% win rate sounds elite. A 35% win rate sounds bad. Both can describe a profitable trader and both can describe a broke one.
The formula is trivial: Win Rate = (Winning Trades ÷ Total Trades) × 100%. What it doesn’t tell you is how big the winners are relative to the losers, and that’s the entire game.
Worked example: same 10 trades, two stories
- Total trades
- 10
- Winners
- 6
- Losers
- 4
- 6 ÷ 10
- 60%
Win rate
60%
That same 60% win rate could mean +₹6,265 net (avg win ₹1,663, avg loss ₹928) or −₹5,400 net (avg win ₹500, avg loss ₹2,100). Win rate alone can’t tell you which trader you are.
Win rate has an inverse relationship with reward-to-risk
High-win-rate systems usually take small profits and bigger losses. They scalp little wins and let stops do the cleanup. Low-win-rate systems usually take asymmetric winners. They catch trends and accept frequent small losses while waiting. Neither approach is wrong. They’re different rides for different temperaments.
Typical zones: 30-45% for trend / breakout systems, 50-65% for mean-reversion / scalping, 70%+ for very tight-stopped intraday with quick targets. Anyone claiming 90% in real money over >100 trades is either cherry-picking or hiding the tails.
What to look at instead
Win rate combined with average win / average loss gives you expectancy, the number that compounds. Win rate combined with bet size gives you profit factor. Win rate on its own is a marketing stat, useful for advertising a course, not for managing real capital.