Do you actually have an edge? Put a number on it
Feeling profitable and being profitable are different things. Expectancy is the single number that tells you whether your trading makes money over a large sample, or just got lucky lately.
Win Rate & Expectancy Calculator
Win rate alone is a trap
A 70% win rate sounds elite until you learn the losers are three times the size of the winners, at which point the account still bleeds. Expectancy fixes this by combining how often you win with how much you win versus lose. It answers the only question that matters: over the next hundred trades, does this system add dollars or remove them? A positive expectancy is the definition of an edge; everything else is a feeling.
How to read your result
Expectancy per trade is your average dollar outcome across wins and losses combined. Profit factor above 1.0 means your gross wins exceed your gross losses. If your expectancy is negative, more volume just loses money faster, and the answer is to change the strategy, not to trade bigger. If it is positive but small, consistency and position sizing become the levers that turn a thin edge into a real income.
One clean sample beats a year of guessing
This calculator is only as honest as the numbers you feed it, and memory is a terrible data source. Traders routinely overweight their best week and forget the slow bleed of small losses. The moment your real trade history is logged and grouped by setup, your true expectancy stops being a guess, and you often find one profitable setup carrying three that quietly lose.
Frequently asked questions
Any positive expectancy is an edge. What counts as good depends on your trade frequency and risk: a small positive expectancy traded many times with disciplined sizing can compound into a strong return, while a negative expectancy is a losing system no matter how it feels.
You have an edge when your expectancy is reliably positive across a large enough sample of trades, not just a good week. The only way to know is to measure real results by setup, rather than trusting the memory of your best trades.
Neither in isolation. A low win rate works with large reward-to-risk, and a high win rate works with small winners. Expectancy is what ties them together, which is why it is the number to optimize rather than either input alone.
Stop guessing whether you have an edge
TraderLog imports your real trades and shows your expectancy, profit factor and win rate by setup, so you can double down on what works and cut what does not. Start with a 14-day free trial.