Skip to content
GetProfitable
Search
Dictionary

Average win

The mean profit of winning trades, which is meaningless without the average loss and the win rate beside it.

The spread of outcomes behind an expectancyA histogram of forty trades: a tall block of small losses on the left, a low spread of larger wins on the right, and a line marking the average outcome.NUMBER OF TRADES051024 LOSSES, AVG −$20016 WINS, AVG +$600EXPECTANCY +$120−$400−$200$0+$200+$400+$600+$800PROFIT OR LOSS PER TRADEexpectancy = (40% × $600) − (60% × $200) = +$120 per trade
Expectancy: the average trade. Forty trades sorted by outcome: 24 small losses and 16 larger wins. Weighting each side by how often it happens gives the average result per trade, marked here by the dashed line at +$120.

Average win is the sum of winning trade profits divided by the number of winners. Quoted alone it sells courses; quoted with its partners it does useful work.

Its most common distortion is the outlier. A record of 60 winners averaging $310 can be 59 trades near $180 and one at $8,000, which is a completely different strategy from one with a tight cluster of results. Always report the median alongside the mean, and check whether removing the single best trade changes the conclusion - see outlier-dependence.

In R units the figure becomes portable. An average win of plus 2.1R and an average loss of minus 0.95R gives a payoff-ratio of 2.2, which combines with win-rate to produce expectancy regardless of account size or instrument.

Related: average-loss, payoff-ratio, outlier-dependence, expectancy-per-trade

Educational only, not advice. Spotted an error? Post in Site Feedback.