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An Excel Worksheet on Trading Performance
Many traders learned the importance of keeping records of all their trades. There are even software to help you analyze your performance by compiling tons of statistics, etc. I have here a simple spreadsheet that I think will be useful no matter you are a system or discretionary trader.
basicmoneymanagement.xls
How to use the Spreadsheet
Top part of the spreadsheet is where you enter the information. The rest of the spreadsheet contains calculations based on your input.
Trades per day can be a decimal number. For example, if you trade once every 10 days, then the trades per day value would be 0.1
For forex traders, the number of trading days per year is more likely to be 350. For stock traders, the number is closer to 250.
Feel free to throw in various combinations of inputs to see how that affects the expected performance.
Two Interesting Statistics
Number of Winners Needed to Breakeven
It is important to understand that this particular statistics solely depends on the dollar amount of average winners and average losers.
Expected Number of Losing Days
By figuring out the probability of each trading day being better than breakeven, you can then project the number of losing days you may have to endure on a per week, per month or per year basis. Very useful to put losing days in proper perspective.