Breakdown
See which setups, mistakes, symbols, hours, hold times and sizes make or lose money.
Breakdown
Breakdown groups your closed trades by one or two dimensions, such as setup tag, symbol or hour of entry, and shows the numbers of each group. Use it to find the setups that carry your results, the mistakes that cost the most, and the times, hold times and sizes where you do better or worse.
The page is in Analytics → Reports → Breakdown. It follows your active account scope, filter, date range, P&L display mode, breakeven threshold and timezone. Hours, weekdays and months are read in your timezone.
Choose the grouping
Two controls sit at the top left of the page:
- Group by picks the dimension. The list is grouped: Tags (all tags, setups, mistakes, emotions, conditions), Trade (strategy, symbol, asset class, long or short, result, account), Time (hour of entry, weekday, month, hold time), Size (position size) and your select and checkbox custom fields.
- then adds a second dimension. Each group of the first dimension then lists its pairs underneath, such as each setup split into long and short. Nothing turns it off.
Choosing a new dimension also sets the sort that suits it: hours, weekdays, months, hold time, size, direction and result run in their natural order, mistakes run from the most costly, and every other dimension runs by net P&L, highest first. The dimensions and the sort are part of the page address, so you can bookmark or share a breakdown.
Hold time uses fixed buckets: under 1 minute, 1–5 minutes, 5–15 minutes, 15–60 minutes, 1–4 hours, 4 hours to 1 day, 1–5 days and over 5 days. Position size compares each trade with your usual size on that instrument and puts it in the smallest quarter, the middle half or the largest quarter.
The key at the top right explains the chart colors, and How to read this page opens this article.
The lead
The top of the page answers the sorted question in one sentence, such as Chased entry cost the most: −$7,356.00 over 40 trades. for mistakes, or the group with the highest net P&L when the groups run in their natural order. The small line above it names the metric and the dimension, such as Net P&L · Mistakes.
The sentence names only groups with at least 5 trades, never the group of trades without a value, and calls a group the most or the least only when no other group goes further.
Under the sentence are up to three figures in the sorted metric: the named group, the group at the other end of the ranking when it has at least 5 trades, and All trades. Show N trades opens the named group's trades. The line next to it gives the number of groups and trades, and how many trades sit in more than one group.
The chart
Beside the lead, a chart draws every group in the sorted metric. Hours, weekdays, months, hold time, size, direction and result are drawn as columns in their natural order, whatever the table's sort. Symbols, tags, strategies, accounts and other dimensions without an order are drawn as a ranking in the table's order.
Net P&L, averages, average win and average loss are green when a group made money and red when it lost money, using your breakeven threshold. Win rate, profit factor, trade counts, hold time and costs use one neutral color. A gray bar means the group has fewer than 5 trades. Costs are drawn as their effect on P&L, the way the table shows them.
The group of trades without a value and the Other group are not drawn. With fewer than two groups to draw, the lead shows only its figures. Hover or focus a bar for the group's trades, net P&L and win rate, and select it to open its trades.
The table
All groups lists every group with these columns:
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Trades | Closed trades in the group |
| Net P&L | Sum of the group's P&L after costs |
| Win rate | Share of winners, using your breakeven threshold |
| PF | Profit factor: gross profit divided by gross loss |
| Average | Average net P&L per trade |
| Avg win | Average winner |
| Avg loss | Average loser |
| Avg hold | Average time from entry to exit |
| Costs | Commissions, swaps, funding, borrow fees and dividends, shown as their effect on P&L |
| Avg MFE | Average maximum favorable excursion: the most a trade was up while open |
| Avg MAE | Average maximum adverse excursion: the most a trade was down while open |
The last row, All trades, shows the same figures for every trade in the view. Headers with a dotted underline explain themselves on hover or focus.
Select a column header to sort by it, and again to reverse the order. The sentence, the figures and the chart follow the sort. On dimensions with a natural order, the first column header returns to that order.
Groups with fewer than 5 trades are shown in gray; their trade count explains why on hover. They never lead the page, because a handful of trades cannot tell a pattern from chance. The group of trades without a value, such as No mistake tag, No strategy, No size baseline yet or Not set for a custom field, and the Other group are always the last rows and shown in gray, so every trade of the view appears without hiding the groups you came for.
With two dimensions, each group of the first dimension is a row with its own figures, and its combinations with the second dimension are indented below it.
Costs, Avg MFE and Avg MAE appear only when some trades have them, and a note under the page says for how many trades when not all do. MFE and MAE need market metrics, which exist for futures with a known contract and for forex, metals, commodity and index CFD trades that Tradeways has price data for. Stocks and crypto have none.
On a narrow screen the controls stack, the chart follows the lead, and the table scrolls sideways while the group column stays in place.
Tag categories
Setups, mistakes, emotions and conditions use the category of each tag. Tags without a category still appear under All tags.
If no tag has the category yet, the page lists your tags instead of the lead. Select each tag that belongs to the category: the change saves at once and the page fills in. Select a tag again to remove the category. A tag that already has another category says which, and moves over when you select it. Manage tags opens tag settings for everything else.
If tags have the category but no trade in the view carries one, the page says so and keeps the tag list, so you can mark other tags. When you view a shared account as a mentor, the page says that the account owner can mark tags, without the tag list.
A trade with several tags counts once in each of its tags' groups, and a trade in several strategies once in each strategy, so group totals can add up to more than the total of the view. When you view a shared account as a mentor, a trade whose strategy the trader has not shared with you is in no strategy group; a note under the page says that some trades cannot be grouped this way, and All trades still includes them.
The trades of a group
Select a row, a bar or Show N trades to open a group's trades in a side panel, newest first. The top shows the group's average P&L per trade against the average across all trades, its total and its win rate, then a strip with every trade's result, the group's average and the average across all trades. Groups with fewer than 5 trades say so. Select a trade to open it.
Limits
- Only the first 50 groups by the sort are listed, counting combinations. The rest are combined under Other.
- In tick and point modes, only trades of your main instrument class carry a P&L value, because ticks of different classes cannot be added up. A note on the page says when this applies and how many trades are left out of the P&L figures.
- Results describe your history. A group with a high average over few trades says little about the next trade.