Win rate alone cannot tell you — 60% winners loses money at the wrong reward:risk, and 35% winners makes a fortune at the right one. Enter your numbers to get expectancy per trade, the win rate you actually need to break even, and what the edge compounds to. Free, and nothing you type leaves your browser.
Six numbers. Move any of them and everything below recalculates.
At 2.0:1 reward to risk you need to win 33.3% of the time just to break even. You win 45% — 11.7 points of real edge.
Expectancy in R for every win rate and reward:risk pair, with losses held at 1R. Green makes money, red does not, and the boundary between them is the one line in trading that cannot be argued with. Your combination is outlined.
| R:R | 20% | 30% | 35% | 40% | 45% | 50% | 55% | 60% | 70% | 80% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0.5:1 | -0.70 | -0.55 | -0.48 | -0.40 | -0.33 | -0.25 | -0.17 | -0.10 | +0.05 | +0.20 |
| 1.0:1 | -0.60 | -0.40 | -0.30 | -0.20 | -0.10 | +0.00 | +0.10 | +0.20 | +0.40 | +0.60 |
| 1.5:1 | -0.50 | -0.25 | -0.13 | +0.00 | +0.13 | +0.25 | +0.38 | +0.50 | +0.75 | +1.00 |
| 2.0:1 | -0.40 | -0.10 | +0.05 | +0.20 | +0.35 | +0.50 | +0.65 | +0.80 | +1.10 | +1.40 |
| 2.5:1 | -0.30 | +0.05 | +0.22 | +0.40 | +0.57 | +0.75 | +0.93 | +1.10 | +1.45 | +1.80 |
| 3.0:1 | -0.20 | +0.20 | +0.40 | +0.60 | +0.80 | +1.00 | +1.20 | +1.40 | +1.80 | +2.20 |
| 4.0:1 | +0.00 | +0.50 | +0.75 | +1.00 | +1.25 | +1.50 | +1.75 | +2.00 | +2.50 | +3.00 |
| 5.0:1 | +0.20 | +0.80 | +1.10 | +1.40 | +1.70 | +2.00 | +2.30 | +2.60 | +3.20 | +3.80 |
₹5.00 L at 1.0% risk per trade, 96 trades a year, for 10 years — assuming the edge above holds the entire time.
The optimistic line runs off the top. Scaled to fit it, the other two would sit flat on zero.
Compounded arithmetically — expectancy × trades, the way most projections do it — the same inputs would show ₹1.43 Cr. The ₹14.39 L difference is volatility drag: a +1R and a −1R do not cancel, because the loss is taken on a smaller account than the win that preceded it. The figure above is the one an account actually follows.
Almost every trader can tell you their win rate and almost none can tell you their break-even win rate, which is the number that decides whether the first one is good news. They are trivially related: if your winners average twice what your losers cost, you break even at 33% and everything above that is profit. If your winners average half what your losers cost, you need 67% just to stand still — and nobody sustains 67%.
This is why cutting losses matters more than picking winners. Letting an average loss drift from 1R to 1.5R — one moved stop, occasionally — raises the break-even win rate at 2R winners from 33% to 43%. Ten points of win rate, surrendered without taking a single extra trade. The grid above shows exactly where that moves you.
R is profit or loss divided by the amount risked on that trade. A ₹8,000 win on a ₹4,000 risk is +2R; a ₹40,000 win on a ₹40,000 risk is +1R. In rupees the second looks five times better and in R the first one plainly is — which is the entire reason this calculator asks for averages in R rather than in money. If that framing is new, start here.
Expectancy is the average amount a single trade returns over many trades, measured in R — your profit or loss divided by what you risked. It is (win rate × average win) minus (loss rate × average loss). Positive expectancy means the system makes money given enough trades; negative means it loses money no matter how well you manage position size.
There is no such thing on its own. A win rate is only meaningful next to reward:risk. At 3:1 you break even at 25%, so 40% is a strong edge. At 0.5:1 you break even at 67%, so the same 40% is a fast way to lose money. Most profitable breakout swing traders sit between 35% and 50% with winners well above 2R.
Divide your average loss by the sum of your average win and average loss. At 2R average wins and 1R average losses that is 1 ÷ 3 = 33.3%. Win more often than that and the system is profitable; win less often and it is not.
Profit factor is gross profit divided by gross loss. Anything above 1.0 makes money. Above 1.5 is a solid system, and above 2.0 is excellent — though a very high profit factor on a small number of trades usually means the sample is too small rather than the system is exceptional.
Because growth compounds multiplicatively and losses are taken on a smaller account than the wins that preceded them. A +1R and a −1R at 2% risk leave you slightly below where you started, not level. This calculator uses the expected log return so the curve matches what an account actually does; most projections skip this and overstate the result, sometimes by a lot.
R is currency-neutral, so the expectancy and break-even maths apply anywhere. The projection is shown in rupees. It excludes brokerage, STT, stamp duty, DP charges and capital gains tax, all of which come off a real result — so treat the figure as a ceiling.
That is the real limit of any calculator like this. Almost nobody's remembered win rate survives contact with their actual trade history, and average loss is the one people are most wrong about — because the trades where a stop got moved are exactly the ones that do not come to mind.
LedgeRR is a journal that computes these six numbers from your real closed trades and puts them into this same screen, so the expectancy you see is measured rather than estimated. Import a broker tax P&L statement and the history is there in a minute.
No card. Or read how importing works first.