Risk
See how big your losses are against your account, how consistent they are, and which trades, days and drawdowns do the damage.
Risk
Risk reads the losses you actually took: how large they are against your account, how much they vary, how much of the total comes from a few trades and days, and how deep and long your drawdowns run. Everything is realized. Planned stops and planned risk are not used anywhere on the page.
The page is in Analytics → Risk. It follows your active account scope, filter, date range, P&L display mode, breakeven threshold and timezone. Values are in your P&L display unit; shares of equity are percentages.
Share of equity
A loss's share of equity is the loss divided by the account's equity just before the trade: the opening deposit and other account transactions plus the result of every earlier trade. A loss of 150 on an account of 10,000 is 1.5%.
The share needs the account's opening deposit. Without it, the page shows losses in your P&L unit only, and a line under the lead finding says so, with a link to the account in your account settings, where you add it as a transaction; with All accounts selected, the link opens the account list. Add the deposit and the shares appear. A note under the page says how many losses have no share and why:
| Reason | What it means |
|---|---|
| The account has no opening deposit | No deposit is recorded, so the account's size is unknown. |
| Account equity was zero or below | The account had no positive equity before the trade. |
| No exchange rate to the account currency | The trade's result could not be converted into the account currency. |
Sections
The page leads with loss size and shows the other sections as tiles in a fixed order; the drawdowns span the full width with their table. Select the bars of a section's chart to list its trades; under the lead section, Show N trades does the same. A month or bucket bar lists the whole section's trades, except the loss-size columns, which list the trades of their range.
| Section | Question | What it shows |
|---|---|---|
| Loss size | How big are your losses compared with your account? | The median, 90th percentile and largest loss, as a share of equity and in your P&L unit. In percentage mode a loss already is its share of the account, so it shows once. The columns count losing trades by share of equity: under 0.25%, 0.25–0.5%, 0.5–1%, 1–2%, 2–5% and over 5%. Select a column to list its trades. |
| Loss consistency | Are your losses about the same size, or do some run away? | How much loss sizes spread around your average loss, read as consistent, moderate or varies a lot; the spread itself is in the tooltip on the title. It uses the same loss-discipline measure as your Tradeways Score, shown out of 100. The bars compare your median loss, the level 9 in 10 losses stay under, and your largest loss. |
| The damage | How much of your losses come from a few trades? | The share of all losses that comes from your worst 5% of losing trades (at least 3) and from your 5 largest. The bars rank the largest of those losses by symbol and day, with the date, holding time, size and share of equity on hover; select one to list your worst losing trades. |
| Losing days | Do a few days do most of the damage? | Your worst day's share of all losses, and the days that lost more than 3 times your median losing day. The bars rank the largest losing days, or your worst day when none is that large; select a bar to open that day on the Daily page. |
| Wins vs losses | How big are your wins compared with your losses? | Average, median and largest win against loss, and the payoff ratio: average win divided by average loss. |
| Risk over time | Are your losses getting larger relative to your account? | A column per month of the median loss as a share of equity. Your losses are split in time into an earlier and a recent half, and the page says whether the recent ones are larger, smaller or the same. |
| Drawdowns | How deep do your drawdowns go, and how long do they last? | Whether a drawdown is open and how deep, a chart of how far the running total sat below its high after every close, and a table of every drawdown. |
A day is a calendar day in your timezone, by the time the trade closed. A losing day's share compares the day's net loss with the total of all losing trades.
Drawdowns
A drawdown starts when the running total of your closed trades falls below its last high and ends when the total is back at that high. In percentage mode, results compound the way your account does. The table lists drawdowns newest first. It starts with the most recent ones and always includes your deepest drawdown, marked Worst; Show all lists every one:
- Start, Low and Recovered: when the drawdown began, when it was deepest, and when the total got back to its high. A drawdown that has not recovered shows Open.
- Depth: how far the total fell, in your P&L unit and, for a single account with an opening deposit, as a share of equity at the high.
- Trading days and Trades: how many days had a close inside the drawdown, and how many trades closed inside it.
Select a drawdown to list its trades. With several accounts in scope, drawdowns are shown in your P&L unit only, because the accounts' equity cannot be added at one moment.
Confidence
These sections describe your trades; they do not test a difference against chance. A section with enough trades carries no label, and the lead section says how many trades it measured. Otherwise a label says why to read it with care:
| Label | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Not enough trades yet | Fewer than 10 trades for the section. It shows as a small label under its heading. |
| Early | Fewer than 30 trades, or the result changes sign without its single largest trade. |
Limits
- Risk uses realized results only. A trade's planned stop, and any risk you meant to take, play no part.
- The × avg loss display mode divides each result by your average realized loss. It is not risk to a planned stop.
- In tick and point modes, only trades of your main instrument class carry a value, because ticks of different classes cannot be added up. A note on the page says when this applies.
- Results describe your history. They do not predict future losses or drawdowns; for a range of possible outcomes, see Monte Carlo Analysis.