There is a permanent tension in trading between how often you win and how much you win when you do. Wider targets lower your win rate; closer targets raise it but shrink each winner. You cannot maximise both, and chasing one blindly is a classic mistake.
Why a high win rate is a trap
A 90% win rate feels wonderful and can still lose money if the occasional loss is huge. Traders chase win rate because being right feels good — but the market pays expectancy, not accuracy. Many high-win-rate systems are one bad trade away from disaster.
Why high reward-to-risk needs patience
Aiming for 3:1 or more means you will lose more often than you win, sometimes in long streaks. It is mathematically powerful but psychologically brutal — most people abandon it during the losing runs, right before it pays.
Finding your balance
The right mix is the one you can actually execute. The maths only works if you follow it through the drawdowns. Test different reward-to-risk levels on your own setup and pick the one with the best expectancy that you can stick to.
Test the trade-off on your strategy
Bulk Quant lets you change your reward-to-risk and instantly see how win rate, expectancy and drawdown respond over 20+ years — so you choose with evidence, not guesswork. Try it free.