Track Record Metrics
No single number tells you whether a strategy is good.
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Before experienced traders ask “will this trade win?”, they ask a better question: “if it wins, how much could it make — and if it loses, how much is planned at risk?” That comparison is the risk/reward ratio. R is the shared unit behind TradingPal's setup-card trade results, so ten minutes here will make those track records much easier to read.
A risk/reward ratio compares what you're risking with what you stand to gain. Say you buy a stock at $100, decide in advance you'll get out if it falls to $95 (your safety exit, the “stop-loss”), and you're aiming for $110 (your “target”). You're risking $5 to try to make $10 — a risk/reward ratio of 1:2.
The value isn't in the ratio alone—it's that you decided both numbers before putting money in. A missing exit plan is a common way a manageable loss can grow into a much larger one.
Many planned trades start with three core prices: where you get in, where you get out if you're wrong, and where you aim to get out if you're right. Trailing and targetless plans can add other rules, but the basic ratio starts here.
No calculator needed — it's two subtractions and a division:
Entry price minus your safety-exit price. Buying at $100 with the exit at $95 → your planned risk is $5 per share. A gap or close-confirmed exit can still produce a worse fill, so this is the plan—not a guarantee.
Target price minus entry price. Target $110, entry $100 → your potential reward is $10 per share.
Reward ÷ risk. $10 ÷ $5 = 2, written as “1:2” — you're risking one dollar to try to make two. If the answer were 0.5, you'd be risking a dollar to make fifty cents, which needs a very high win rate to survive.
Traders got tired of saying “I made $412 on a $10,000 position with a $200 risk,” so they invented a cleaner unit: R. One R is simply the amount you planned to risk on the trade — the distance from your entry to your safety exit. Everything else gets counted in that unit.
Here's the intuition most beginners find easiest: R is just how much you're willing to lose on one trade. Many systems risk a small, fixed slice of the whole account each time. On a $10,000 account with 1% planned risk, that's $100, so 1R = $100. Make twice what you risked and you're up +2R ($200); exit exactly at the safety price and you're down −1R ($100). TradingPal's setup cards use this unit for per-trade return and expectancy statistics.
In the example above, your risk was $5 per share, so $5 = 1R. If the stock hits the $110 target, you made $10 — that's +2R. If it exits at $95, you lost $5 — that's −1R. That is the plan, not a guaranteed fill: gaps and close-confirmed exits can produce a loss worse than −1R, which is why the historical R distribution matters more than the diagram.
R makes unlike trades comparable relative to planned risk. A +2R trade on a $9 stock and a +2R trade on a $900 stock both earned twice their planned risk; that does not make them identical in liquidity, slippage, holding time, or capacity. Setup-card average return and expectancy are measured in R; Autopilot and live-account dollar expectancy are measured in dollars. The track-record metrics guide shows how to read each beside win rate and profit factor.
One practical note: R only means something if the safety exit is real. Pattern backtests place it beyond the relevant swing—a recent dip for a long trade or a recent peak for a short—and every simulated trade follows the declared exit rule. The R numbers you see assume that plan was followed.
The honest answer: there is no magic number, because risk/reward and win rate are two ends of the same see-saw. Before costs and assuming exact planned fills, a 1:1 ratio needs to win more than half the time; a 1:2 ratio breaks even at about 34%. A 1:5 plan can break even near one win in six, but farther targets are usually reached less often.
That is why “only take 1:3 trades or better” can backfire. Moving a target farther away can lower the hit rate enough to erase the prettier ratio. The result has to be measured, not assumed.
What matters is the combination: the win rate, the average size of a win, and the average size of a loss. Their average after everything cancels out is called “expectancy.” A system that averages +0.3R per trade across a large sample has a positive historical edge even if it loses often. Walk through the full relationship in win rate, profit factor, and expectancy.
A qualifying pattern setup comes with three prices pre-drawn: the confirmed entry trigger just beyond the pattern boundary, the safety exit beyond the relevant recent swing (that planned distance is the trade's 1R), and a target projected from the pattern's own height (the “measured move”). Bullish converging-pattern policies can hold past that target while the price stays above its 10-day average; other policies take the measured target.
The important phrase is those exact rules. We do not calculate the appealing 1:2 ratio and then grade the trade with a different exit later. Our backtesting methodology explains how the same entry, safety exit, and target move from the chart into the historical test. The latest completed stored pattern result shows where that see-saw settled in R:
| Pattern | Usual break | Win rate | Avg return | Backtested trades | Fresh (45d) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bullish Pennant | Up | 55.2% | +0.58R | 13,034 | 74 |
| Bearish Pennant | Down | 44.1% | +0.15R | 11,004 | 51 |
| Ascending Triangle | Up | 55.2% | +0.58R | 13,034 | 14 |
| Descending Triangle | Down | 44.1% | +0.15R | 11,004 | 4 |
| Symmetrical Triangle | Either way | 55.2% | +0.58R | 13,034 | 95 |
| Falling Wedge | Up | 53.9% | +0.38R | 13,048 | 83 |
| Rising Wedge | Down | 49.3% | +0.13R | 14,154 | 56 |
Historical results of a simulated strategy, refreshed nightly. Triangle rows show their usual break direction's family; each guide breaks out both directions.
R is the app's common language for individual setup outcomes. The screener's left-rail track-record panel (the real component below, populated from the latest completed stored result) reports each family's average return in R; each setup tile shows the projected move to its target; and when you open a chart, the copilot marks the entry, safety exit, and target—the three prices this article is about—directly on the candles.
So when the app says a pattern averages +0.58R, you now know exactly what that means: across the tested trades, wins and losses included, the historical average was a little more than half the amount planned at risk per trade.
Not a screenshot — this is the real panel from the screener, populated from the latest completed stored nightly result.
No single number tells you whether a strategy is good.
Anyone can say a chart pattern “works.” Backtesting is how you check: write the rule precisely, replay it over years of prices, and keep every simulated trade—winners and losers alike.
If you've ever looked at a smooth equity curve and thought, “Okay, but what did you leave out?”—good.
A bull pennant is a short breather after a stock runs higher.
Educational content, not investment advice. Backtest statistics are historical results of a simulated strategy. Publication timing varies by record; the numbers describe the past, not the next trade.