Technique to improve win rate

Hello, I’m wondering if there is a technique to improve win rate? I had a very good week as a beginner trader with the demo account, I managed to increase the account by 4% risking only .5% per trade. The only thing I was unhappy with is the win rate, 50 losses cut very tight hardly ever reaching the stop loss because I scale out of a loss, and 34 wins, all of the wins were larger than the losses.

I feel the only way to improve win rate is to keep practicing my entrance, do more study before entering a trade to improve accuracy and never to enter too late or too early. Is there anything else one can suggest? Many thanks.

Keep doing what you are doing. You are handling trade management very well. Don't worry about the win rate that will improve with experience. What you need to do however is assess if your strategy has longevity because with that your confidence in the system will cancel out your concerns about win rate.

Just don't derail your success by shifting your strategy entirely. If you do find your strategy starts to lose then assess through records if anything has changed. If it's just a case of your strategy being lucky then whatever you do, do not change the way you are managing risk because you are doing that right. Maybe you should look at building a strategy around momentum. The reason I state this is because you can build the strategy to expect immediate market feedback and through that you will know very quickly if your trade is wrong and you won't care about cutting it. You will also learn that your trade should see profit fairly quickly and this has many benefits.

Not many retail traders get the benefits of what you are doing but trust me, I do it as well and it's key to my consistency.

Well done

what ecotrader is saying. keep doing what is working. Disciplined journaling of your trades may help you weed out certain set up over time but like ecotrader has stated wait until you have a sample size big enough before thinking about making any material change to your strat. Improving your strategy WILL cost you money (or time), there is unfortunately no way around that as you need enough out of sample trades to test the validity of ideas appropriately.

with that being said the win rate combined with RR does not give the full picture. Frequency is paramount. if you focus too much on hit rate it will probably lead you down the path of adding filters to your trading process which could reduce the number of trades you take; might not be what you want as a trader. I'll choose 50% hit rate and 1,5RR over 55% and 1,5RR if the 50% hit rate strat gives me twice the number of trades a week. At this point, as a trader, it comes down to what you want to maximize: your $ earned or the stability of your returns.

You could try decreasing your profit target and increasing your risk but from my experience, this isn't helpful. Even if you go after 1 pip while risking 1000 pips doesn't necessarily mean you'll increase your win rate or have a useful strategy. If you're not happy with your win rate, that means change or adjust the strategy.

Hi, you can backtest and develop inverse position if its over 60% it will hit your SL you technically imrpoved your winrate... But its all about R:R x winrate...

Dear PianistMat,

I agree with what the above FF members have kindly shared. Especially the last comment where "But it's all about R:R x Win-rate".

For that type of trading using SL, you need to focus on being consistent and really analyze your trading results. Well done on a good week, but you may need more then one week of trades to get an idea of your system and the way you apply it on the market. Instead of focusing on win-rate, figure out 'How much do you win, when you win and how much do you lose, when you lose. That is the R:R x win-rate.

Take these 2 traders for examples; Trader A wins 20% of his trades (80% losers), but wins $9 for every $1 of risk (9:1 R:R) and Trader B wins 60% of his trades, but wins $1 for every $1 of risk (1:1 R:R). (Swaps, fees, commissions = all included)

Which one of the above traders is more profitable after 1000 trades? Trader A or Trader B ?

To improve on that, you have mentioned to work on your accuracy and not to enter late (not following strategy rules, being undisciplined). So, if you increase accuracy without compromising the other side of the equation (R:R), you will in turn increase profitability. How exactly? Many answers for this as it depends on your unique situation and strategy. One way to eliminate early/ late entry is allow an EA partial control of placing entries for you, if your rules can be described mechanically and put into code. That takes your bias (psychology and emotion) out of the equation regarding entries.

Kind Regards,
Tzamo

Sharpen your entry. That's all

As people commeted above its about R:R. Win ratio only tell your ratio of risk. Less bad trades, less risk. But you can have 80% win ratio and loss money. Then your pips avg / profit factor ( 2 R:R measures ) will tell you how safe is your system