Measuring a strategy's performance isn't just about picking the highest returns. It's also about the drawdown you are happy to tolerate, the amount of trades being taken and the risk per trade. The risk reward ration and the win rate of trades is also important. There are many ways to measure a strategy's performance, so work out what your desires are from a strategy first (in terms of return, risk etc.) and find strategies that fit that.
Let’s take a deeper look at the statistics available to analyse a Strategy Provider’s strategy. Depending on your needs as an investor, you may be more comfortable with a trader who has low maximum drawdowns, frequent wins compared to losses or has plenty of trades each week.
To ensure you know what each statistic means or relates to, this guide outlines the statistics available, along with a description.
Profit = TWR -coefficient of profitability which reflects profit to initial capital ratio
Positions = No of Closed Positions
Profitable % = No of Profit closed position in percentage
Losing % = No of Losing Closed position in percentage
The above statistics can show how many trades are made, the profit made on the account and the position win loss percentage.
Other statistics
Realized RnL, USD = Total closed PnL on account
Max Daily profit, USD = MAX(Daily floating profit + closed profit)
Max Daily loss, USD = MAX(Daily floating loss + closed losses)
Profit factor = sum_prof / sum_loss
Recovery factor = TWR / TWR_max_drawdown
Max Drawdown = MAX TWR drawdown
Age, days = Age of account since 1st deal (if there are no deals, then since account
creation)
% Profitable days = % of days account making a profit (>0)
% Losing days = % of days account making a loss
The above statistics are based around profit factor (anything above 1.0 is often profitable), and profitable % of days. As an example, the profitable days being over 50% would mean that based on the trading history, the trader has half of the days profitable and half the days not profitable. From a mindset perspective, an investor will have an idea of how often a trader will have losing days. For example, 50% losing days would mean every second day is a losing day, but if the Strategy is profitable based on those statistics, it will be easier to remain in the trades and strategy.
Longest series
Profitable positions = Highest Profitable streak in closed trades
Losing positions = Highest losing streak in closed trades
Profitable days = Highest profitable streak in days
Losing days = Highest losing streak in days
The series of statistics above will guide the investor on the longest streaks of losing, profitable positions and days. For example, positions means trades that are consecutively profitable or losing. This will be good to know, particularly when the Strategy Provider trades many positions in a single day, so that the maximum losses previously can be understood and possibly accepted by the investor. When you know the trader has x amount of losses, but the account is positive overall, it may indicate that there is nothing going wrong or unusual with the strategy overall.