A results page is a list of closed trades scored after the fact under the page's own method, and most providers score what price reached rather than what an account running one exit rule would have made. The breakeven guide shows how far those two can differ on a single trade. Keep that in mind before any number below: everything on a results page is retrospective scoring, and you are trying to estimate an executable result from it. To do that you need three numbers, and win rate is not one of them on its own.
The three numbers
1. Win rate, with its counts. 90% is meaningless without "of how many". Twenty trades at 90% is noise; a few hundred is a pattern. Ask for the counts, and ask what a win is: "reached TP1" is not "reached the target you would have used", and a rule that holds for TP3 wins less often than the TP1 rate suggests, because some TP1 hits reverse to the original stop.
2. Average win in pips against average loss in pips. A service whose average win is 20 pips and average loss is 80 pips needs to win four out of five just to break even, before spreads. This is where high win rates hide losing strategies: small targets, wide stops, and a rate in the nineties that produces a flat account. Read the average stop distance and the average distance to the target that was actually reached, not TP3.
3. Expectancy. (Win rate × average win) minus (loss rate × average loss). That is the number of pips you should expect per signal over many signals. Win rate alone does not establish an edge. Compare average gains and losses under the same execution rule, and remember that expectancy is an estimate from a sample, not a property of next month: a positive historical expectancy still contains losing months, and a 90% win rate with tiny wins and wide stops can be a losing rule.
Everything else on a results page (monthly pips, best trade, streaks) is derived from those three or is decoration.
Where the three numbers hide on a results page
Most pages show only the first. To get the other two:
- Filter to a full month. Count wins, losses and breakevens.
- For each win, note the target reached (TP1, TP2 or TP3) and its distance from entry. Average them.
- For each loss, note the stop distance. Average them.
- Compute expectancy.
The average win depends on which target you close at, so do this once per rule you are considering. The take profit guide explains why that rule moves the result more than the signals do.
How breakevens change the read
Ask how the page treats breakeven. Some providers record a 0 when they close a trade at entry and count it as a win; some count it as neither; some never record one and keep the highest target reached even if price later drifted back through entry. Each is defensible if stated. None is comparable to another until you know which it is. When you compute expectancy, treat breakevens as their own category at 0 pips. They lower the average win without being losses, and a record with many of them and a high win rate is a record of small, frequent, unremarkable trades. Not bad, but not what the headline rate suggests.
Turning pips into money
Pips are the record's unit because they are the same for everyone. Money depends on your sizing, so convert with your own numbers:
- Fixed lots. Pips × pip value per lot × lots. At 0.10 lots on EUR/USD, one pip is $1; a +40-pip month is +$40. Gold at 0.10 lots is also $1 a pip if the page counts a gold pip as $0.10 of price; check the convention, they differ.
- Risk per trade. Better, and it has to be done trade by trade. For each signal, divide its result in pips by its own stop distance in pips. That is the trade's R: +2R means it made twice what it risked, -1R is a full stop, 0R is a breakeven. Add the R values up for the month. Because the copier's Risk % mode sizes every trade from its own stop, R is the unit your account actually moves in.
Two trades show why the shortcut of dividing total pips by an average stop is wrong: a +100-pip win with a 100-pip stop is +1R; a 10-pip loss with a 10-pip stop is -1R. Together they are 0R, a flat month. Total pips divided by the average stop would call it +90 ÷ 55, about +1.6R, on a month that made nothing. Pips only mean something next to the stop of the trade that produced them, which is why a provider quoting pips without stop distances is quoting half a number.
To turn a month's R into a percentage: at a fixed risk fraction r of the starting balance, the month is r × total R (1% risk and +6R is +6%). If you resize every trade from the current balance, compound instead: multiply (1 + r × R) across the trades in order; two +1R wins at 1% come to +2.01%, slightly more than the simple figure, and a losing run comes to slightly less. Both are models with assumptions built in: one trade at a time, sized at entry, filled at the signal's prices. Trades that overlap in time change what each one was sized from, and spread and slippage change every fill, so the figure your account shows is the only real one. Use the model to compare rules and providers, not to forecast a balance.
Reading any results page in five minutes
- Open the page and choose one full month.
- Read the counts, not the rate: signals posted, stops hit, breakevens and how they are treated.
- Note which exit level the page scores at and whether that matches the rule you would run. A page that records the highest target reached will show a TP1 win for a trade a TP3 holder lost.
- For each signal, divide its pips by its stop distance and add the R values up. Ten signals is enough to see the shape; the whole month is better.
- Multiply the total R by your risk per trade. That is the month under the model's assumptions (one trade at a time, sized at entry, filled at the signal's prices), not a forecast of an account.
If step 5 is a number you would be happy with in a normal month and could survive in a bad one at the same sizing, the record is telling you something useful. If you skipped straight to the win rate, it told you nothing.
How this works on the Forexero results page
Our results page records the highest target a signal reached, with the counts beside the rate; once TP1 is reached a signal is never recorded as a loss, and a breakeven is recorded only when the desk closes a trade at entry, counted as a win in the win rate. The verify page states all of that. The site backtester re-cuts the same record at the exit level you choose, TP1, TP2 or TP3, which does the averaging in step 4 for you but is not a replay. For one month we also published a candle-by-candle replay under six rules with the export behind it, in the month's write-up; that is the difference between a record and an executable result, on our own signals.
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