Trading statistics are key metrics that show how you are performing. Tracking and monitoring your statistics is important if you want to improve, as these statistics highlight strengths and weaknesses in your trading. ForexTester, an easy-to-use backtesting and trading-practice software, tracks your trading statistics for you.

Key trading statistics to monitor include:

• Win rate or win percentage: how many trades you won out of trades taken.
• Reward:risk: average profit divided by average loss.
• Number of trades

Win rate and risk/reward can tell you a lot about your trading. A lower win rate isn’t necessarily bad; many great traders have win rates near 30% or less, but you’ll need a high reward:risk to make a low-win-rate strategy profitable. With a high win rate, you can get away with a lower reward:risk.

Profitable trading is about finding the balance. Deciding what kind of trader you want to be and improving on the statistics that will get you there.

Additional key trading statistics include:

• Maximum win: your biggest profit during the period (such as a month or your last 100 trades).
• Maximum loss: your biggest loss during the period.
• Consecutive losing and winning trades.
• Max drawdown: how much the account dropped before recovering back to the prior high.

Ideally, wins are bigger than losses. Keep an eye on the maximum loss. If it is a lot bigger than your average profit per trade, you could face issues. Because then even a single losing trade can wipe out many winning ones. Control losses.

Consecutive wins and losses are important because they let you know what you can expect from your system. I mainly like to know my consecutive losses. If the strategy usually only produces up to 3 losses in a row (out of many trades), for example, then you know you can expect that in the future. It’s not an issue. So if you currently have 6 losses in a row, that is out of the ordinary, and maybe you should pause to see if there is an issue or if you need to adapt to changing market conditions.

Maximum drawdown is the drop in capital you experienced over a given period. This helps you know what to expect in the future, or what you need to work on. If the maximum drawdown is more than you wanted, then you can work on win rate, reward:risk, or consecutive losses in order to reduce this. You can also look at reducing position size, which will help reduce drawdown during the learning phase or a tough period, but will also reduce profits during good times.

Here’s a video summary of the trading statistics feature in Forex Tester.

Trading Statistics in Forex Tester

ForexTester (use the link and discount code: TRADETHATSWING10 to get 10% off) is a piece of software you download that lets you trade historical days in forex, stocks, crypto, and commodities as if you were trading live.

You can backest strategies or just pick a day and then day trade as if the day was happening right then. Place orders, see news events for that day, and the price bars unfold second by second just like they do in the live market.

Even though I have been trading for nearly 20 years, I still have regular practice sessions with Forex Tester to stay sharp and work on any problem areas that may pop up in my trading.

In addition to providing great practice, Forex Tester has loads of built-in trading statistics to help you see what you need to work on. If you are profitable, that’s great. The statistics can help you see why, so you can attempt to maintain that in the future, or improve on them. If you are unprofitable, you can see why, and can take steps to remedy that.

Trading statistics in :

Below is an example of the statistics based on 12 trading days in April of 2018 (19 days total, because some markets trade on weekends) using the strategies covered in the EURUSD Day Trading Course. Remember you can go back and trade any days you like. The starting capital for this project was $3500 and the new starting balance was used each day to calculate position size (compounding).

You can start with whatever starting capital you like when you set up a project in Forex Tester (more on that below).

This is just an example, don’t worry about the actual statistics too much. I am working on things during my practice sessions, so some statistics may be higher or lower than what I might aim for in my live trading because I am trying to work on a specific aspect.

How to Access Trading Statistics in Forex Tester Software

Trading Statistics are shown when you click the Statistics button under the Windows tab.

When you click the statistics button, you will see a pop-up window like my example shown in the section above.

This is ok, for a quick glance, but the pop-up covers a chunk of the screen which isn’t ideal when backtesting or trading. To make it accessible, without covering your screen, click and hold along the top of the pop-up (where it says “Statistics”). The window will turn blue as you start to move it. Drag it down to your Open Positions/Pending Orders/Account History window which is typically open along the bottom of the screen.

As you drag the Statistics window over the Open Positions window, the Open Positions window will turn blue. Let go of the Statistics window and it will now be a tab you can open to see your stats any time.

Trading statistics will apply to all the trades within a project. A project is simply specific data you have downloaded and named. The statistics will track any trades made in that project.

On the Home tab of the software, you can open other projects you have created to see the statistics on those projects, or you can create a totally new project. Statistics won’t be available until you have made trades in a project.

Final Word on Forex Tester Trading Statistics

ForexTester is a great tool that I use regularly. It can speed up the learning curve and the trading statistics are an additional feature that can show you where you are doing well and where you need to do some work. Remember to Forex Tester discount code TRADETHATSWING10 to get 10% off.

By Cory Mitchell, CMT

Disclaimer: Nothing in this article is personal investment advice. Trading is risky and can result in substantial losses, even more than deposited if using leverage. This article contains affiliate links and this site may be compensated if you purchase a product via the links.