The trading journal metrics that actually predict an edge

A 30% win rate is excellent for a trend follower and catastrophic for a scalper. On its own the number tells you how often you were right, which is not the same as how much you made. It only becomes informative when paired with the size of the average win and the average loss, which is exactly what the next two metrics do.

Risk-to-reward expresses each result as a multiple of what you risked, so a 0.2-lot loss and a 2-lot loss can sit in the same average without one drowning the other. Once results are in R, a losing trade that respected its stop and a losing trade that did not are visibly different events rather than two red rows.

Expectancy is what you earn per trade on average, in R, across everything you have taken. It folds win rate and R:R into a single figure, and its sign is the whole argument: a positive expectancy is a system worth repeating, a negative one is a system that more discipline will only make you lose money faster at.

Gross profit divided by gross loss. Above 1.0 you are making money, and most durable retail systems sit between 1.2 and 1.8. Its real value is comparative: run it per strategy and per symbol, and the strategy you are most attached to is quite often not the one carrying the account.

Every metric above describes a system that is allowed to keep trading. Maximum drawdown describes whether it will be. On a funded account it is the rule that ends you, and on a personal account it is the number that ends your conviction. Read it first when reviewing a losing run, not last.

Drawdown to know whether you are safe, expectancy to know whether the system is worth repeating, profit factor per strategy to know which part of it to keep, R:R to know whether your exits match your plan — and win rate last, if at all, because by then you already know everything it could have told you.