Trade Expectancy Calculator
Closed-trade sample
Use winner and loser totals from one consistent sample and currency. This aggregate version requires at least one winner and one loser so every displayed diagnostic has a finite, comparable denominator.
Sample economics
These are descriptive statistics from the entered sample, not a forecast of future trades. A positive historical expectancy or profit factor can disappear when market conditions, execution, or the underlying strategy changes.
Where the average trade comes from
The same sample expectancy can be read as net P/L divided by total trades or as the observed win-rate-weighted average winner minus the observed loss-rate-weighted average loser. The table makes that reconciliation explicit.
| Component | Frequency | Average outcome | Contribution per trade |
|---|---|---|---|
| Winning trades | 60% | $150.00 | +$90.00 |
| Losing trades | 40% | -$100.00 | -$40.00 |
| Net sample expectancy | 100% | — | +$50.00 |
Break-even diagnostics
Expectancy and profit factor answer different questions
Profit factor is aggregate gross profit divided by aggregate gross loss. It is scale-free: a value of 1 means the sample's gross winners and gross losers offset one another before any costs not already included in those trade results. Expectancy keeps the dollar scale and answers what the average completed trade contributed in this sample.
Two samples can have the same profit factor but very different average-trade dollars, trade counts, sequencing, and uncertainty. Neither metric by itself measures drawdown, tail risk, or statistical confidence.
Use the other tools for uncertainty and path risk
This page deliberately stays descriptive. The Backtest Win Rate Confidence tool handles sampling uncertainty around win rate. The Kelly Criterion Calculator turns a chosen probability/payoff assumption into theoretical fixed-fraction risk comparisons, while the Trading Risk of Ruin Calculator analyzes path-dependent equity-floor risk under a fixed-fraction binary model.
Sample and cost boundaries
Enter gross profit and gross loss from the same completed-trade sample. If your trade P/L already includes commissions, fees, spread, slippage, financing, or other costs, those effects flow through mechanically. If those costs are omitted from the source totals, every result here is correspondingly before those omitted costs.
The calculator does not import brokerage history, infer breakeven trades, model open positions, estimate variance or confidence intervals, analyze trade ordering, size positions, or recommend whether to trade a strategy. Aggregate winner/loser summaries can hide skew, outliers, regime changes, and concentration in a small number of trades.
Method sources
- Fidelity Strategy Testing glossary, defining gross profit/loss and profit factor as gross profit divided by gross loss.
- Sonar Sciences trade expectancy glossary, describing expectancy as the win/loss-frequency-weighted average trade outcome.