P&L tells you the result. Good trading analytics attempt to explain how you got there. Here are ten metrics worth understanding.
1. Net P&L
The obvious starting point. How much did your trading make or lose after applicable trading costs?
2. Win Rate
The percentage of trades that were profitable. Useful but dangerous when viewed alone without the context of average win and loss size.
3. Average Winner
How much does your average winning trade make? This provides essential context to your win rate and helps calculate expectancy.
4. Average Loser
How much does your average losing trade cost? Compare this with your average winner. A ratio below 1 means your average win is smaller than your average loss.
5. Profit Factor
Gross Profits divided by Gross Losses. A profit factor above 1 indicates gross profits exceeded gross losses over the measured sample. Below 1 means the strategy lost money overall.
6. Trading Expectancy
Expectancy estimates the historical average value generated per trade based on win and loss frequency and magnitude. Positive historical expectancy is one indication that the measured results had an edge.
7. Maximum Drawdown
How far did your performance fall from a previous peak before recovering? Two traders can generate identical returns while experiencing dramatically different drawdowns. Drawdown measures the risk you took to achieve that return.
8. Average Holding Time
How long are you typically in a trade? Compare holding times for winners versus losers. Many traders discover they hold losing trades considerably longer than winners, which directly harms their results.
9. Consecutive Wins and Losses
Streaks help you understand the variance you are actually experiencing. This is also useful for evaluating whether behavioral changes occur after several wins or losses in a row.
10. Performance by Time
Analyze performance by hour, day, week, and month. It can expose patterns that total P&L completely hides. Many traders discover they are profitable in the morning and give it all back in the afternoon.
Do not optimize one metric
Improving win rate is not automatically good. Reducing average holding time is not automatically good. Increasing trade frequency is not automatically good. Metrics need context and the objective is to understand the relationships between them.
Build your trading scorecard
MyTraderScore turns your trading history into this kind of performance analysis so instead of asking whether you made money you can start asking what specifically is making or losing you money.