What Statistics Are Important in Forex?

When you are testing a Forex system or method, you are testing it to see if it can provide consistent, repeatable profits. The only way for you to see this objectively is through statistical evidence. There is a tendency for new traders to assume that there is one all important statistic which they should work on, but this isn’t a re`listic way of going about developing a system that works. Many people think that if they create a Forex system with a high win percentage, for example, they will be profitable. But what if your losses are all huge and your wins are tiny? You might still have a losing system.

The best approach is to cultivate a number of Forex statistics which provide you with important information about your trading. Well-gathered statistical evidence will not only demonstrate to you whether a system is profitable, but give you information which you can use to improve that system. Here are some important statistics to focus on during your Forex backtests and demo tests.

• Win/loss ratio (or win percentage). Obviously you want to get a high percentage of wins and a low percentage of losses. This is one of the most important things you can aim for, but as mentioned already, it isn’t everything.
• Size of wins and losses. You want larger wins and smaller losses if possible.
• Net pips. How many pips have you made, total, over the course of the Forex test?
• Number of breakeven Forex trades. How many trades did you break even on? The reason this is important to calculate is because you will usually lose a little money on breakeven trades since you must still pay the spread for the trade. You will need to add up the costs of your breakeven trades and subtract that cost from your net profit. It can be significant if you have a lot of breakeven trades.
• Worst losing streak. How many losses in a row did you incur during your worst losing streak?
• Average number of winning trades per day/week/month/year. If you’re eventually going to trade for a living you need to get some feel for how much money your system might actually make you in a given real life time period.
• Number of winning/losing trades for various types of Forex trades. If your method involves multiple entry methods, tally up data on every single one of them. You may also want to take notes on context. You may discover a price pattern or indicator which works great in one context works poorly in another. You can then make the adjustment to your next test.
• SOL Quotient. This term comes from well known Forex trader Rob Booker. Your SOL Quotient = your net profit/maximum loss. The resulting number is how many of your worst losing trades you’d be able to withstand in a row before blowing your net profit. Naturally you want this to be a large number.

You can profit with any one of these statistics being poor — if the others make up for it. There is no one golden statistic which determines statistics — but taken together these statistics can help you to succeed at Forex. If you are using MetaTrader platform to backtest or demo test your trading strategy, you can then use a report analysis tool to get all these important statistics.

If you want to share your opinion on the importance of various FX trading statistics, please use the commentary form below to post it.

What to Include in a Forex Backtest Spreadsheet

One critical step on your Forex journey is going to be backtesting. Once you find a system or method which you like, you are going to need to run through historical data and see how your method would have performed on real trades over the past few weeks, months or years (depending on the timeframe you’re planning to trade). It is recommended you do at least a couple hundred of backtest trades for any given system to establish a really good idea of how the Forex system will perform in those market conditions. Market conditions do change, so a backtest still doesn’t give you all the information you need, but it can sure give you a good lead in to your demo testing. If you record a lot of important information you can also learn specific things that work and don’t work and how you can refine your system to statistically improve your profits.

On a Forex backtest spreadsheet you will want about six columns. The first will state whether each trade was a buy or a sell. The second column should list the date, and the third column the reason for the trade. The fourth and fifth columns should be the entry and exit prices respectively. The last column will be the sum of pips you gained or lost from each trade. The column where you list the reason you entered the trade can be a good place to take specific notes along with the triggers which caused you to enter. Those notes will come in handy later, so be detailed, especially on trades you lose. Later you can look back and find patterns which will help you to refine and eliminate losses.

Write your Forex trading rules at the top of your spreadsheet. They will help you focus and also remind you of what your rules were on this backtest when you look back on it later. If you make changes as you go to your system, note those changes and the historical dates on which you implemented them.

Some statistics to calculate from your data, which will be useful to you, include net pips from your entire Forex backtest, along with the values of your average win and average loss. You’ll want to tally how many wins and losses you have, and what your win percentage and win to loss ratio is. Remember that the spread will cost you some profit on every trade, and breakeven trades are technically at a very small loss as a result. You can calculate an adjusted net which takes these losses into account. Take note of your biggest losing streak, and how many losses in a row you endured. Also find out your average net winning trades per month, week, day, or whatever is an appropriate unit of time for you to overview your trading. Another good quotient to add up is your net profit divided by your maximum loss. This will tell you how many of your largest losses you could endure before blowing all your profits.

Forex backtesting can be pretty overwhelming at first, but eventually you’ll get used to it and get into a rhythm. And it can be incredibly rewarding—it can make the difference between whether you blow your account in real life or become a profitable trader.

Trading in Real Life: Why You Need to Demo Test

Have you backtested a fantastic system over hundreds or even thousands of trades, and achieved a high win percentage and otherwise excellent statistics? If so, you may be tempted to go live. Some traders struggle to bring themselves to actually take their Forex systems live, but for others it is impatience and not trepidation which is the enemy. If you are thinking of taking this great system which you’ve backtested live without demo testing, think again. Backtesting and trading in real life are completely different, and you may have quite a bit of work ahead of you to achieve the same kind of results in real time as you did backtesting.

The first thing a lot of us discover while demo testing is that we completely forgot that in real life we do stuff like work, eat, and sleep. Something which worked fine in backtesting may be impossible to fit into our real life schedules, or take some very serious workarounds. You may need to learn to trade using a cell phone if you are at work during trading hours for example. Or what if your Forex trades tend to fall in the dead of night? You’ll need to trade in your sleep, and that means setting a lot of price alerts. Those alerts will have to wake you up at useful times though, and even figuring that out can be like designing an entirely new system. The wrong system of alerts can cause you to lose the same trades you’d have won while demo testing!

Another difference you’ll discover quickly is the role which time plays in your trading psychology. When you move the Forex charts forward a candle at a time and make trading decisions in a few seconds or minutes while backtesting, you don’t have a lot of time to second guess yourself. The same trades though, spread out over a time period of hours, days, or even weeks, can cause a lot of traders to experience a wide range of conflicting emotions. Many times we ask ourselves “What decision would I have made backtesting?” only to discover that we don’t know anymore! It takes a lot of practice to find out how timing is impacting your trading. You may find you need to trade on a different timeframe, or just get a grip on your emotions.

While all this may again sound simple in theory, most traders discover Forex demo testing presents a lot of unexpected situations which need resolution before they can go live. We highly recommend that you demo test until you are profitable for at least 2-4 consecutive months before you go live with your system. There is no reason for you to lose a dime in this business unnecessarily since you can demo test for as long as it takes for you to master your trading, completely free! Your drawdown live should reflect your backtesting figures, but it won’t unless you invest some time and effort demo testing and finding out how to integrate trading into your real life first.