I remember a podcast with Larry Williams where his trend trading had 30% win rate. He seemed to do alright for himself. Most people would stick to the plan better if they had a high win.
Ken Grant is a risk consultant to many of the super star traders & firms. He reviewed raw brokerage records of the best traders and this is what he found: "Across all market conditions, trading styles, time frames & traders, one rule holds true: 5-10% of all trades account for 90% of profits." "I know of many portfolios that are so effective in their actual trading/execution and risk-control practices that they make large sums of money in a consistent, risk-adjusted manner with win/loss percentages in the low forties or below. The trick, of course, is to make sure that your winners pay off at higher multiples than those of your losers." High win rates appeal to the human desire for comfort & loss aversion, doing what is comfortable will never never make you a profitable trader.
A moderator here at ET told me the OP referred to the person that started the thread as in "thread starter". I replied...why isn't it then TS ? He replied...technically its the "original person" a phrase from the old messaging boards online prior to Elitetrader. I replied...heck how old is Baron (ET owner) ? He must be in a nursing home. wrbtrader
Without referring to a person, some people consider OP to mean "Original Post" or the first post that got the discussion topic going. And just for the record, I'm 48. No nursing homes for me yet.
Brilliantly written and spot-on true. A lot like the Pareto principle type thinking, eg 20% of trades account for 80% of profits. Lol re old, OP I'm 56 and remember dialup 56k modems, wildcat BBS boards and cool ASCII welcome screens.
When you go to Forex Factory, it's very easy to find people who blow their accounts again and again with +95% win rate.......
With proper risk management, you can be a profitable trader with a 50% per trade win ratio or less. Sometimes I hope my initial trade goes the wrong way just so I can ride the correct breakout or breakdown with ~3x the previous size.
I basically agree with you but some people such as Boris Schlossberg (CNBC FX commentator and Kathy Lien's business partner) are strongly against 'risk:reward ratio' concept. Once he even said it's the biggest BS he's ever heard. Interesting...... https://www.bkforex.com/boris-schlossberg/the-counter-intuitive-nature-of-riskreward-ratios/