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Expectancy Calculator

Your average edge per trade — positive or not.

Expectancy / trade$35
Reward : Risk1 : 2.00
VerdictPositive edge

Educational tool only — not financial advice. Verify figures with your broker.

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What is the Expectancy Calculator?

The Expectancy Calculator is a trade-statistics tool that computes your average profit or loss per trade — your mathematical edge — from your win rate and your average win and loss sizes. It answers the question: on average, does one trade of this system add to or subtract from the account, and by how much?

How to use it

  1. Enter your win rate as a percentage.
  2. Enter your average winning trade size and average losing trade size (in dollars or in R).
  3. Read the expectancy figure: it is the average result you can expect per trade over a large sample.
  4. Note the sign — a positive number means the system added value on average over your sample; a negative or zero number means it did not.

How it's calculated

Expectancy = (win rate × average win) − (loss rate × average loss), where loss rate = 1 − win rate. Equivalently in R terms: expectancy = (win% × avg win in R) − (loss% × 1R). It is a probability-weighted average of the two outcomes.

Frequently asked

What is a good expectancy in trading?

Any positive expectancy means the system's average trade added value over the sample measured; higher is better only relative to your costs and variance. This trading expectancy calculator reports the raw number — it does not label a level as 'good' or guarantee it repeats.

How is expectancy different from win rate?

Win rate is only how often you win; expectancy combines win rate with how much you win versus lose. A system can win 40% of the time and still have positive expectancy if its wins are large enough relative to its losses.

Does positive expectancy mean I'll make money?

Not necessarily. Expectancy is a backward-looking average of the sample you enter; small samples are dominated by luck, and future win/loss sizes can differ from the ones you typed in.

Keep in mind: Expectancy is an average over the numbers you supply — it says nothing about the order of wins and losses, the drawdown along the way, or whether your past win rate and average win/loss will hold in the future.

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