A trader can improve their win rate…
…and become a worse trader.
Suppose you take 100 trades.
You win 70.
You feel like you’ve solved the market.
Then you discover something uncomfortable
Your average winner is $50.
Your average loser is $200.
Your 70% win rate is losing money.
Now reverse it.
You win only 35 trades out of 100.
But your average winner is $400 and your average loser is $100.
Suddenly the trader who “loses most of the time” is the profitable one.
This is why win rate is such a seductive statistic.
It feels like a score.
It isn’t.
A trader can spend months trying to increase the percentage of trades they win…
while quietly destroying the economics of the trades they take.
The better question isn’t
“How often am I right?”
It’s
“What happens financially when I’m right and when I’m wrong?”
Because trading doesn’t reward accuracy in isolation.
It rewards the relationship between accuracy and payoff.
And sometimes the trader who looks least impressive on the scoreboard…
is the one with the better game