Trading Journal

What the numbers mean

P&L = (exit − entry) × size × direction − fees
R = P&L ÷ (|entry − stop| × size)
expectancy = mean R  ·  profit factor = gross profit ÷ |gross loss|

Expectancy is the single most useful figure here: the average R across your trades. Positive means the edge is real over the sample; negative means it is not, regardless of how the last few trades felt. Profit factor answers a related question in cash: how many dollars you made for each dollar lost, where anything above 1 is profitable and above about 1.5 is genuinely healthy. Win rate is the number traders quote and the least informative on its own, a 35% win rate at 3R is far better than 70% at 0.3R.

How the Journal Score is built

The score is our own composite, built around the metric this journal cares about most, expectancy. It is the plain average of seven sub-scores, each mapped to 0-100 by a fixed rule shown next to the radar, with no hidden weighting. Win rate scores 100 at 50% (2 x win rate). Profit factor scores 100 at 2.0. The payoff ratio, average win over average loss, scores 100 at 2.0. Expectancy, your mean R, scores 100 at +0.5R; when no trades carry a stop it cannot be computed and is left out of the average rather than counted as zero. Recovery factor, net profit divided by the largest drawdown, scores 100 at 3.0. Drawdown control scores from how small your worst peak-to-trough dip was relative to your equity high, so a shallow drawdown scores near 100. Consistency is the share of your trading days that finished green. Each sub-score is capped at 100, the available ones are averaged, and below about ten trades the headline is greyed because a score off a handful of trades is noise. It is a summary of what you already entered, not a verdict, and nothing about it is proprietary.

On sample size

Be careful reading anything from a handful of trades. Twenty trades tells you almost nothing: the swing between a 40% and 60% win rate over twenty samples is ordinary luck. Expectancy estimates only start to firm up over a hundred or more trades, and breakdowns by setup need that many per setup before they mean much. Therisk of ruin simulatorshows how wide the range of outcomes is even when an edge genuinely exists, which is the best antidote to over-reading a small journal. Feed your measured win rate and average R into therisk/reward calculatorto check the edge is real, and size with theposition size calculatorso no single trade can end the experiment early.