--- title: "MFE and MAE: How Far Did Your Trade Go For and Against You?" description: "MFE is how far a trade went in your favour before it closed. MAE is how far it went against you. What they mean, and how they help you test stops and targets." canonical: "https://www.youredgeflow.com/blog/what-is-mfe-and-mae" last-updated: "2026-10-28" --- # MFE and MAE: How Far Did Your Trade Go For and Against You? By Milo Maebe, published 2026-10-01, updated 2026-10-28. MFE, maximum favourable excursion, is how far price went in your favour before your trade ended. MAE, maximum adverse excursion, is how far it went against you. Together they show what happened inside the trade, so you can ask whether your stop is too tight, your target too far, or a break-even stop would have helped. Two trades both ended at your stop. In one, price went straight against you. In the other, it first ran nearly to your target, then turned all the way round. Your journal shows the same result for both. They taught you very different things. That is what MFE and MAE are for. ## What do MFE and MAE mean? **MFE** stands for maximum favourable excursion. In plain words: the furthest price went in your favour while you were in the trade. **MAE** stands for maximum adverse excursion. In plain words: the furthest price went against you while you were in the trade. The names sound technical. The ideas are simple. How good did it get? How bad did it get? ## How do you measure them? After the trade, look at the chart between your entry and your exit. Find the best price for you and the worst price for you during that time. The easiest way is to write them as a multiple of your risk, like your result. Say your risk was ten points, and price went fifteen points your way at its best. Then the MFE was one and a half times your risk. If it went five points against you at its worst, the MAE was half your risk. That way of measuring is called R: your result in units of risk. Writing MFE and MAE in R makes trades of different sizes comparable. ## What can MAE tell you about your stop? Look at your winning trades. How far did they go against you before they won? If most of your winners never went more than half your risk against you, your stop may be wider than it needs to be. A tighter stop would have kept most of them, and made each loss smaller. If many winners went almost all the way to your stop before turning, your stop is about right, or even tight. Moving it closer would have turned those winners into losers. ## What can MFE tell you about your target? Look at all your trades. How far did they go in your favour? If many trades went well past your target before turning, your target might be too close. You are leaving part of the move behind. If many trades turned before reaching your target, and then lost, your target might be too far. A closer target, or taking part of the profit earlier, would have turned some of those into wins. ## What can they tell you about breakeven stops? Look at your losers. How many first went a good distance in your favour? Those are the trades a breakeven stop would have saved. Then look at your winners. How many came back to your entry before reaching the target? Those are the trades a breakeven stop would have killed. The two counts together show whether moving to breakeven would have helped you. ## What does it look like in a real journal? Tom is the trader in EdgeFlow's demo. His example journal ends around break-even, at +0.02R per trade. One step of the demo is "Entry and after entry": which way of getting in and managing the trade went with his best results. His final plan, with that step in it, averages +0.53R per trade over 63 trades. The same counting works for your stop and target once you log how far each trade ran. This is example data, and it describes Tom only. [Watch it in the demo](https://www.youredgeflow.com/demo) ## How many trades do you need? More than a handful. A few trades can show any pattern by chance. Look at these numbers over a few dozen trades at least, and prefer more before you change your rules. [How many trades you need before you can trust a setup](https://www.youredgeflow.com/blog/how-many-trades-to-validate-a-setup) explains why. Also, change one thing at a time. If you tighten your stop and move your target at once, you will not know which change did what. ## Is it worth the extra effort? For most traders, yes, once logging is a habit. It adds two numbers per trade and takes less than a minute. In return you can test stop and target ideas on your own past trades instead of guessing. [What to track in a trading journal](https://www.youredgeflow.com/blog/what-to-track-in-a-trading-journal) lists it as optional for exactly that reason: very useful, but only once the basics stick. ## Two more questions ### How do I use MAE to set my stop? Look at how far your winners went against you. If most stayed well inside your stop, your stop may be wider than needed. ### Do I need software to track MFE and MAE? No. You can read them from the chart after each trade and type them into any journal or [a spreadsheet](https://www.youredgeflow.com/compare/spreadsheet). Read next: - [What Is R in Trading? R-Multiples in Plain Words](https://www.youredgeflow.com/blog/what-is-r-multiple) - [What Is a Trading Edge?](https://www.youredgeflow.com/blog/what-is-a-trading-edge) EdgeFlow has a field for how far each trade ran in your favour and one for how far it went against you first. With the first one, EdgeFlow replays a fixed target, or a stop moved to break-even after 1R, on your own past trades. That is arithmetic on trades you already took, so it hints at your rules and forecasts nothing. --- Education about reviewing your own trading, not financial advice.