Win rate is the percentage of a trader’s closed trades that end in profit, calculated as winning trades divided by total trades. A trader with 45 winners across 120 trades has a 37.5% win rate.
Win rate is the most quoted and most misused statistic in trading, because it says nothing about profitability on its own. What matters is the pair: win rate and average win relative to average loss. A 35% win rate is excellent if winners average three times the losers; a 75% win rate loses money if occasional losses are huge. The breakeven win rate for any risk-reward ratio is risk ÷ (risk + reward), before costs.
Win rate is also the statistic most distorted by small samples — ten trades tell you almost nothing — and the easiest to inflate with habits that hurt overall results, like cutting winners early or letting losers run.
45 winners in 120 trades: 45 ÷ 120 = 0.375 → 37.5%. At 1:2 risk-reward the breakeven win rate is 1 ÷ (1 + 2) ≈ 33.3%, so 37.5% is profitable before costs.