Trading Analytics That Explain Why Your Results Happened
Trading analytics should tell you why your results happened, not only what they were. A profit total and a win rate describe the past. Splitting your trades by the confluences you looked at, what the market did, how you got in and what you did after shows which choices made the difference.
What is the difference between a report and an explanation?
A report says what happened: you made money this month, you won half your trades. An explanation says why: your morning trades made money and your afternoon trades gave half of it back.
Most trading dashboards stop at the report. To explain a result, a journal needs more than the result itself. It needs what sat behind each trade.
Which basic numbers are worth knowing?
These are the starting point. Each one in plain words:
- Win rate: how often you win. Six winners out of ten trades is sixty percent.
- Average win and average loss: what a typical winner made and a typical loser cost.
- Profit factor: everything you won compared with everything you lost. Won three hundred and lost two hundred? You won one and a half times what you lost.
- Average result in R: R is your result in units of risk. +2R means you made twice what you risked. The average of those is called expectancy.
Two traders can have the same numbers here and trade in completely different ways. These numbers describe the outcome. They do not say what caused it.
What explains the numbers?
The causes sit in four places: the confluences you looked at before you got in (a confluence is one thing you check before entering), what the market was doing, how you got in, and what you did after. When each trade carries those, you can split your trades and ask questions like these:
- Did my trades do better when the bigger chart was moving my way?
- Do I lose more in the afternoon than in the morning?
- Does moving my stop to my entry price early cost me?
For each answer, EdgeFlow shows how many trades are in each group, how many won and the average result in R.
Why look at whether you followed your rules?
On every trade you can mark whether you followed your rules and which one you broke. If you answer it every time, you can filter your trades to the ones where you did and the ones where you did not, and see the totals of each. That often explains a large part of a result that was blamed on the strategy. Is it your strategy or how you traded it? shows how to use this after a losing month.
How many trades does a result rest on?
Every number in EdgeFlow comes with the count of trades behind it. A great-looking result over a dozen trades is an idea to test, not a conclusion. A coin can land heads eight times in twelve without anything being wrong with it. When a group is too small, EdgeFlow says it is too early to tell.
Where do the analytics live?
The dashboard gives the summary: your total in R, your win rate, your average per trade, your profit factor, a line of your account over time, and a table per weekday. The data view shows one row for every answer you ever logged, with the number of trades, the number of winners and the average in R. Edge Discovery walks you from those rows to a written plan. And a separate view shows your losing streaks and your drops, each with the number of trades behind it.
Common questions
What are trading analytics?
Trading analytics are the numbers you get from your own trades, such as your win rate, average win, average loss and average result per trade. Useful analytics also split your trades into groups, so you can see why the results came out the way they did.
What is the most important trading statistic?
Your average result per trade over many trades, called expectancy. It combines how often you win with how much you win and lose. Always read it with the number of trades behind it.
Why is my win rate high but I still lose money?
Because your losers are bigger than your winners. Win rate only counts how often you win. If a few big losses outweigh many small wins, the total goes down.
Can I see my results by time of day?
Yes. EdgeFlow reads the day of the week, the time of day and the session from the time of each trade, so you can compare them without typing anything extra.
Does EdgeFlow have a library of reports?
No. It has a dashboard, a data view with every answer you logged, Edge Discovery to build a plan, and a view of your losing streaks and drops. Each number shows how many trades it rests on.
Related reading
Guides on this topic
- EdgeFlow vs Edgewonk: Which Journal Fits You?EdgeFlow vs Edgewonk: deep reports and psychology tools against counting which of your checks made money. What each does better, and the prices.
- Losing Month: Is It Your Strategy or How You Traded It?A losing month comes from the strategy or from how you traded it, and the fixes are opposite. One question on every trade tells you which it was.
- What Is Expectancy in Trading? One Number, ExplainedExpectancy is what a trade is worth to you on average, over many trades. Why it beats win rate, what a good number looks like, and how to see your own.
- Six Months of Journaling and Nothing ChangedYou log every trade and your results haven't moved. Why recording trades isn't the same as learning from them, and the one habit that changes that.
See which of your confluences made money
Log your trades, tick the things you checked before you entered, and see which of them did the work in your own trades.