Guide

How to read a trading track record

No jargon, no maths degree. This page explains what the numbers on the showcase mean and, more usefully, what they hide.

Start with these three

The equity curve. The account's value over time. You want a line that climbs steadily. A jagged line that shoots up and crashes back is a system taking big risks to look good.
Maximum drawdown. The biggest fall from a previous high. This is what you'd have to live through. A system that doubles your money but drops 50% on the way is unusable for most people.
Profit factor. Money won divided by money lost. Below 1.0 the system loses money. Around 1.2–1.5 is a real, workable edge. Anything above 3 usually means too few trades to trust yet.

The traps

These are where beginners get caught, and they're the reason we publish the awkward numbers alongside the flattering ones.

A high win rate proves nothing. A system can win 90% of the time and still be ruinous if the 10% of losses are enormous. Always read win rate next to average win versus average loss.
Short history. Two profitable weeks is luck, not evidence. Look at how many trades the score is based on. Under about 100, treat it as a hint.
Demo accounts are gentler than live ones. Real money involves slippage, fees and worse fills. Every system here is labelled demo or live for that reason.
Deposits inflate returns. Paying money in makes equity rise without a single good trade. Our return figures exclude deposits.
Costs eat small edges. Commission and swap can turn a slightly profitable system into a losing one, which is why commission is shown.

Glossary

Equity: What the account is worth right now, including profit or loss on trades that are still open.
Balance: What the account is worth counting only finished trades. Equity and balance differ while trades are open.
Open P&L: Profit or loss on running trades. It changes every minute and isn't real until the trade closes.
Drawdown: How far the account has fallen from its best-ever value, as a percentage.
Win rate: The share of closed trades that made money.
Profit factor: Total money won ÷ total money lost. 1.0 is break-even.
R and expectancy: "R" is the amount risked on a trade. A +2R trade made twice what it risked. Expectancy is the average R per trade: the single most honest measure of an edge.
Sharpe ratio: Return compared with how bumpy the ride was. Higher is better; below zero means the bumps weren't rewarded.
Lots: Trade size. In forex, 1 lot is 100,000 units of the base currency.
Pip: The smallest standard price move in a currency pair, usually the fourth decimal place.
Stop loss / take profit: Preset prices that close a trade automatically at a loss or a profit.
Long and short (buy/sell): Long profits when price rises, short profits when price falls.
Z-score (the entry trigger): How far price sits from its own recent average, counted in "normal wanders". The bot looks at the last 20 one-hour candles: at 2.0 or more the move is unusually stretched, which happens on about 5% of bars. Stretched high it sells, stretched low it buys, betting on a snap back. It is wrong when a market genuinely trends.
Martingale / grid: Strategies that add to a losing position, betting on a bounce. They produce many small wins and rare, very large losses. Both systems here use a version of this, which is exactly why we show drawdown so prominently.
Commission and swap: The broker's fee per trade, and the overnight financing charge for holding a position.
Trade health (ours): A 0–100 read on whether an open trade's original reason still holds: is price reverting as expected, is the wider trend against it, how much room is left before the stop. Information only; it never closes a trade.
Kelp Score: A 0–100 rating from four parts: expectancy per trade (40%), profit factor (25%), return over 30 days (25%) and maximum drawdown (10%).

An honest word on risk

Most retail traders lose money. Automation doesn't change that; it only makes decisions faster and more consistent. Everything here is a research project shared with friends, not a product, an offer, or advice. Never trade money you can't afford to lose.

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