Risk & Reward Calculator
Plan any trade in under 30 seconds. Pick one of four presets (Conservative 1% / Moderate 2% / Aggressive 3% / Scalp 0.5%), search any ticker for a live price and a 14-period ATR auto-fill, set up to three partial take-profit targets, and the calculator returns Risk:Reward, breakeven win rate, dollar risk, position size, expected value, a profitability curve across every win rate from 0 to 100, and a Monte Carlo simulation of 50 to 500 trades. Free, no signup, works on stocks, forex, crypto, indices and commodities.
The R:R ratio: why 1:2 is the floor and 1:3 is the goal
Most R:R tools on the open web ask for an entry, a stop, a target and print one ratio. This one pulls live data for any symbol, lets you plan up to three partial take-profit targets, computes the dollar risk against your real account size, draws a profitability curve across every conceivable win rate, and runs a Monte Carlo simulation on the setup so you see the range of outcomes, not just the headline ratio. The six panels below follow the order the screen renders them, from the quick-template chips at the top to the Pro Kelly Criterion card and the locked AI Trade Advisor at the bottom.
1. Start from a quick template. Four presets, one click.
The top of the calculator is a four-button strip that pre-fills the entire form to a recognised risk profile. Conservative sets 1 percent account risk and biases the target to a 1:3 ratio: the canonical profile for funded-account candidates and any trader who wants to grind a low-drawdown equity curve. Moderate sets 2 percent risk and a 1:2 target, the most common active-trader profile and the one the academic literature endorses as the upper end of sane discretionary risk. Aggressive sets 3 percent risk and a 1:1.5 target for traders running high win-rate intraday systems where the edge does not need a wide reward to be profitable. Scalp sets 0.5 percent risk and a 1:1 target, designed for high-frequency scalpers who close dozens of trades a session and need the dollar risk per trade to be small enough that a normal losing streak does not threaten the account. Pick a template and every field below populates instantly, then adjust any number you disagree with.
ONE CLICK
BE WR 25%
LIVE + ATR
AAPL|
Apple Inc.
Stock
$185.00
TP × 2 ATR
2.85
2. Search any instrument and pick direction. Live price autofills.
Type the first letter of the symbol into the searchable combobox and a debounced request fires against the live instrument search. Results sort exact match first, then starts-with, then contains, so AAPL ranks above AAPU the moment you finish typing. Each row shows the symbol, the full instrument name, and a colour-coded type pill (stock, forex, crypto, etf, index, commodity). Click a row and the calculator fires two parallel requests: a price hit returns the live mid quote and pre-fills the Entry Price field, and a timeseries hit pulls a 14-period Average True Range that becomes available as a one-click SL × 1.5 ATR and TP × 2 ATR auto-set chip. Above the search sits the Long or Short toggle: pick the side and every distance below flips its sign automatically.
3. Set entry, stop, account balance and risk percent
Four inputs that together produce the dollar risk on a real trade. Entry price autopopulates from the live quote the instant you pick a symbol, with a small green Live badge confirming the feed is fresh. Retype it only if your fill came in different. Stop-loss price is the level where the trade closes if it goes wrong. Below entry for a long, above entry for a short. The calculator validates the sign automatically and flags the field red if you typed a number on the wrong side. Account balance defaults to ten thousand dollars but persists across sessions once you change it, and Risk per trade defaults to 2 percent on the Moderate template, 1 percent on Conservative, 3 percent on Aggressive, 0.5 percent on Scalp. The two numbers multiply to set the dollar amount you are willing to lose on the trade, which then drives the position size the calculator returns later. Inline validation flags any out-of-range value before the calculate hit so you never run the math against a typo.
UP TO 3 TPs
$188.00
40% of position
$191.50
40% of position
$194.00
20% of position
1 : 2.6
4. Add up to three take-profit targets with percent allocation
The differentiator. Most R:R calculators stop at a single take-profit. Real trading almost always involves partial exits: take a third off at the first major resistance to bank some profit, take another third at the measured move target, ride the last third with a trailing stop into the macro level. The calculator supports up to three targets via the Add Target button, each with its own price field and a percent-of-position allocation that has to total exactly one hundred between them. The Target Breakdown panel returns a row per target showing the dollar reward, the R:R against the original stop, and the cumulative fraction of position closed. The bottom of that panel prints a Weighted Average R:R across all targets and a Blended Win Rate needed to break even, which is the number that actually matters: the breakeven win rate for the whole multi-leg trade plan, not just the first leg.
5. Read the six-card result panel and the profitability curve
Six numbers, every one of them load-bearing. Risk to Reward is the headline ratio against the take profit (or the weighted average if you used multi-target). Win Rate Needed is the breakeven win rate at that ratio, computed as 1 / (1 + R:R): at 1:2 you need 33.3 percent, at 1:3 you need 25 percent, at 1:1 you need 50 percent. Risk Amount is the literal dollar amount you lose if the stop triggers. Reward Amount is the dollar gain if the take profit fills. Position Size is the number of shares, contracts, lots or units required to make the risk equal the dollar number above. Expected Value is the per-trade EV at the breakeven win rate, which is by definition zero. Below the cards sits the Profitability Curve: a chart that plots EV across every conceivable win rate from 0 to 100 percent, with your current breakeven win rate marked on the curve. The picture tells you exactly how much edge you need above breakeven for the strategy to be worth running.
R:R 1:3
6. Run Monte Carlo, unlock Kelly Criterion and the AI Trade Advisor
The free calculator runs a Monte Carlo simulation directly on the trade plan you just built. Pick 50, 100, 250 or 500 trades, hit Run, and the engine simulates that many sequenced outcomes at your breakeven win rate, then prints the Median Outcome, Best Case, Worst Case, and Max Drawdown across the run. The chart plots the equity curve for every simulation so you see the realistic shape of variance, not just the headline ratio. Subscribers get two extra layers. Kelly Criterion (Pro) takes your historical win rate as an input and returns the optimal capital fraction to size at, alongside Half-Kelly and Quarter-Kelly variants that most professionals actually use to reduce variance and protect against win-rate estimation error. CleaRank Financial AI Trade Advisor (Ultra) returns a letter-grade verdict on the setup, reads the pattern, checks the take-profit targets against structural levels, and lists suggested adjustments to the partial-exit allocation.
Reward-to-risk and win rate: the trade-off that defines profitability
Risk and reward is a universal math but the inputs that produce a profitable plan are wildly different from one trading style to the next. Pick the profile that matches your week and the calculator points you at the right template, the right ATR multiplier and the right partial-exit allocation.
Swing traders on three-day to two-week positions
Pick the Moderate template, search the ticker, hit SL × 1.5 ATR and TP × 2 ATR to auto-place levels around the live volatility band. Add a partial TP at the prior swing high and let the second TP ride to the measured-move extension. The Monte Carlo at 100 trades tells you the realistic drawdown profile of the strategy.
- Template: Moderate (2 percent risk)
- Target R:R: at least 1 to 2
- Default TPs: 50 percent / 50 percent split
Forex day traders with pip-based stops
EUR/USD, GBP/JPY, AUD/USD. The Moderate template at 2 percent risk on a 20-pip stop produces a forty pip target at 1:2 R:R, which on a standard lot is roughly two hundred dollars of risk and four hundred of reward. The calculator handles the 0.01 pip size on JPY crosses automatically and computes the dollar risk against your actual lot size.
- Template: Moderate or Scalp
- Typical stop: 20 pips, majors
- JPY pairs: 0.01 pip size auto
Crypto traders with volatility-adjusted stops
Bitcoin, Ethereum and large-cap alts swing 5 to 8 percent in a day. The ATR auto-fill button on the calculator pulls the live 14-period ATR so the stop adapts to current volatility instead of forcing a one-size-fits-all percent. Pair that with the Conservative template at 1 percent risk so position size stays small enough to survive normal noise.
- Template: Conservative (1 percent)
- SL: 1.5 ATR auto-fill chip
- TP: 2 ATR, or 1:3 manual
Funded-account candidates and prop-firm traders
major funded-account programs and the rest of the prop-firm ecosystem cap daily loss at 5 percent and total loss at 10 percent. The only safe template is Conservative at 1 percent risk and a 1:3 target. The calculator returns the position size that keeps each trade inside the daily-loss envelope and the Monte Carlo confirms whether 100 trades at your typical win rate stays under the total-loss cap.
- Template: Conservative (1 percent)
- R:R target: 1:3 minimum
- Run MC at 250 trades
Setting the stop: structure, ATR or fixed percent
Most R:R calculators on the open web ask for an entry, a stop, a target, and print one ratio. That works for the back of an envelope, but it tells you nothing about whether the strategy survives a normal losing streak, what your true expected value looks like at the win rate you actually hit, or how multi-leg partial exits change the math. This calculator is built differently. Real ATR data on every symbol, not a guess: search any ticker and the tool fetches the real-time price plus a 14-period ATR from a 60-bar OHLC window, then offers one-click SL × 1.5 ATR and TP × 2 ATR auto-fill chips so the levels are anchored to current volatility. Multi-target planning: most calculators stop at one TP. This one supports up to three partial exits with explicit percent-of-position allocations and computes the Weighted Average R:R and Blended Win Rate across the entire plan. Monte Carlo built in: pick 50, 100, 250 or 500 trades and the simulation returns Median Outcome, Best Case, Worst Case, and Max Drawdown, so the picture of the strategy includes realistic variance, not just the headline ratio. Kelly Criterion plus AI verdict on Pro and Ultra: no other free calculator returns Full, Half and Quarter Kelly sizing alongside a letter-graded AI trade verdict.
The calculator also ties into the rest of the CleaRank dashboard. The stop distance round-trips with the Position Size Calculator so you can size a trade against the exact stop this tool produces. The take-profit levels feed the Trade Expectancy Calculator when you want to model the strategy across a hundred trades. The full trade plan saves directly into the Trade Journal on Pro. Pro and Ultra subscribers run the same calculator inside the full trading workbench at trade.clearank.com, alongside the trading simulator, the stop-loss calculator and the slippage auditor.
Reading the R:R bar: where your trade sits on the edge spectrum
Risk to reward is the ratio of dollar loss on the wrong trade to dollar gain on the right trade, measured from the entry price to the stop and from the entry to the take-profit. A 1:2 ratio means you risk one dollar to make two. A 1:3 ratio means you risk one to make three. The single defining feature: it is decided before the trade opens, and it is the only number in trading that lets you be wrong more often than you are right and still come out ahead.
Why it matters. A 1:1 ratio means you have to win more than fifty percent of trades to make money. A 1:2 ratio drops the breakeven win rate to 33.3 percent. A 1:3 ratio drops it to 25 percent. That is the entire reason professional traders chase asymmetric R:R: a 33 percent win rate with a disciplined 1:2 strategy still grows the account, while a 60 percent win rate with a sloppy 1:1 strategy bleeds the account dry once spread and slippage are paid. The math does not care about confidence in the trade. It only cares about the geometry of the entry, the stop, and the target.
The 1:2 rule of thumb. Most professional risk managers and the academic literature on retail trading converge on a 1:2 minimum: never enter a trade where the planned reward is less than twice the planned risk. The reason is statistical. Spread, slippage and commission together eat roughly half of one R on most retail brokers. A 1:1 trade after costs is closer to 1:0.5, which requires a 67 percent win rate to break even. A 1:2 trade after costs is closer to 1:1.5, which requires only a 40 percent win rate. The 1:2 minimum builds in a cushion for the costs you will pay no matter how clean the entry is.
- The ratio is fixed before the trade opens. An R:R you compute after price has moved is not planning, it is rationalisation. Why it matters: the entire value of the calculator is that the worst-case loss and the planned reward are written down together, in one screen, before adrenaline arrives.
- The breakeven win rate matters more than the headline ratio. A 1:3 ratio sounds great until you realise it requires the target to be three times further from entry than the stop, which often pushes the target past the resistance that is actually likely to hold. The Breakeven WR pill on the result panel exists for this reason: it tells you whether the win rate you actually hit historically can sustain the planned ratio. Why it matters: if your win rate is 40 percent, a 1:1.5 plan with realistic targets beats a 1:5 plan with fantasy targets.
- R:R without a stop is infinite risk. The whole ratio depends on a stop level. Take the stop away and the denominator is undefined, the position can lose unbounded amounts. Why it matters: the calculator refuses to compute results if the stop field is empty, by design.
“The cliché says cut your losers and let your winners run. The math version of that cliché is risk to reward. A disciplined 1:2 R:R lets you be wrong 60 percent of the time and still grow the account. A sloppy 1:1 needs you to be right 67 percent of the time just to pay the costs. Pick the right ratio and the rest of the system has room to breathe.”
The formulas, in plain English
Five formulas, every one of them simple. The calculator computes all five on every run, but the names below tell you exactly which input drives which output. Risk to Reward is the geometric ratio of distances. Breakeven Win Rate is the inverse: the minimum win rate at which a constant-R strategy breaks even. Position Size converts the dollar risk back into units of the instrument. Expected Value is the long-run per-trade outcome at any given win rate. Kelly is the mathematical optimal fraction of capital to risk, given the ratio and an estimate of the win rate.
The defaults built into the calculator are not arbitrary. The 2 percent default risk per trade is the upper bound that most professional risk managers endorse for active discretionary trading. The 1:2 default target ratio is the academic minimum for after-cost profitability. The 14-period ATR on the auto-fill chips is Wilder’s original specification, the 1.5 multiplier on the SL chip is the standard for swing positions, and the 2.0 multiplier on the TP chip targets the meet-the-1:1.3 baseline most setups need to clear costs.
Monte Carlo simulates n trade sequences at the entered win rate and prints median, best, worst and max drawdown.
Worked example: four trades, four templates
Same calculator, four very different instruments and templates. The verdict in the bottom of each card is what the result panel would show, assuming the account size noted on the card and the canonical risk percent for that trader profile.
Four instruments, four templates, four very different verdicts. The AAPL swing carries a 1:3 ratio with a 25 percent breakeven win rate, comfortable for a discretionary trader who hits anywhere north of 40 percent. The EUR/USD day trade prices a textbook 1:2 with a 33.3 percent breakeven win rate, the standard intraday forex setup. The BTC swing short prices a beautiful 1:4 with a 20 percent breakeven win rate, the asymmetric ratio that crypto traders chase. The SPY scalp prices a flat 1:1 with a 50 percent breakeven win rate, fine if you actually hit a high enough win rate to clear spread and commission, painful if you do not. Compare the four on your own setups and you will see the calculator’s job: it never picks the trade for you, but it always tells you what the geometry, the dollar number, and the required win rate actually look like before the click.
Which template fits which trader
Each of the four quick templates is built around a specific trader profile. Use the table on the right as a reference: find the row that matches your trading rhythm, read the risk percent and the target ratio, then click the matching template at the top of the calculator to pre-fill the form.
The fifth row, Funded-account-safe, is a custom override that combines the 1 percent risk from the Conservative template with a strict 1:3 target. This is the configuration most prop firms (major funded-account programs, Apex, funded-account programs) reward in evaluation phases. It produces the lowest realised drawdown in the Monte Carlo across 250 trades at typical win rates, which is exactly what the rule sets look for.
| Template | Risk % | Target R:R | BE WR | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Conservative | 1.0% | 1:3 | 25% | Beginners, low-drawdown swings |
| Moderate | 2.0% | 1:2 | 33.3% | Active discretionary traders |
| Aggressive | 3.0% | 1:1.5 | 40% | High win-rate intraday systems |
| Scalp | 0.5% | 1:1 | 50% | High-frequency scalpers |
| Funded-safe | 1.0% | 1:3 | 25% | major funded-account programs |
Funded-safe is a custom configuration that pairs Conservative risk with the strict 1:3 target most prop firms reward in evaluation phases.
Five risk-reward mistakes that quietly drain accounts
Risk to reward is simple math, and the five most common ways traders break it are also simple. Recognise the patterns and the calculator above prevents every one.
- Setting the take-profit closer than 1R because the stop felt scary. A 1:0.5 trade requires a 67 percent win rate to break even after costs, which almost no retail strategy hits sustainably. The fix is brutal: if your only path to a stop you can stomach is a target inside 1R, the setup is bad, do not take it. Why it matters: small risk and small reward feel safe but the math says the strategy bleeds the account regardless of confidence.
- Moving the stop further once price moves against you. The single most expensive mistake in retail trading. Price approaches the stop, the trader widens by a few percent to give the trade more room, and a small planned loss becomes a catastrophic one. The discipline is the opposite. If the calculator returned the stop, the stop is correct. Let it trigger and take the small loss. Why it matters: every blown account in retail trading traces back to a stop that was moved at least once.
- Ignoring correlation between take-profit targets. Three BTC longs are not three trades, they are one bet on Bitcoin sized 3x. The same is true for three correlated forex longs (EUR/USD, GBP/USD, AUD/USD), three semiconductor longs (NVDA, AMD, ASML), or three crypto majors. Why it matters: the calculator computes risk per trade, not portfolio-level exposure. If you stack correlated positions, multiply the risk percent by the count of correlated holdings before you size each one.
- Risking the same dollar amount on a 3-pip stop and a 30-pip stop. Dollar risk should be fixed at 1 to 2 percent of account, and the position size should adapt to make the stop distance fit that dollar amount. A 3-pip stop on EUR/USD at standard lot is roughly $30 of risk, a 30-pip stop is roughly $300. Why it matters: if you trade the same lot size on both, your account exposure swings tenfold from one trade to the next, which is how disciplined traders accidentally blow up.
- Using risk to reward without a stop. A ratio implies two finite distances. Take the stop away and the ratio is undefined, and the position can lose unbounded amounts on an adverse move. Why it matters: the calculator refuses to compute results if the stop field is empty, by design. Outside the calculator, mental stops and hope-and-pray exits are not stops.
Continue the workflow with these calculators
Frequently asked questions
What is a good risk-to-reward ratio for day trading?
For active day trading on stocks and major forex pairs, the canonical floor is 1:2, the working sweet spot is 1:2 to 1:3, and anything below 1:1 should be skipped unless your win rate is comfortably above 60 percent. The reason is cost. Spread, commission and slippage together eat roughly half of one R on most retail brokers, so a 1:1 plan after costs is closer to 1:0.5 and needs a 67 percent win rate to break even. A 1:2 plan after costs is closer to 1:1.5 and needs only 40 percent. The Moderate template on the calculator pre-fills 2 percent risk with a 1:2 target precisely because that combination has been the most studied and most reliable across decades of retail backtests. Aggressive day traders who genuinely hit a sustained 55 to 60 percent win rate can drop to 1:1.5 (the Aggressive template), but be honest about your real win rate, not your remembered one. Run a Monte Carlo at 250 trades to see whether the win rate you actually hit is enough to keep the chosen ratio profitable.
How do I calculate position size from R:R?
Position size is not derived from R:R, it is derived from the dollar risk and the stop distance. The formula is size = (account × risk%) / |entry − SL|. Worked through on a 10,000 dollar account with 2 percent risk and a stop 3 dollars below entry: dollar risk is 200 dollars, stop distance is 3 dollars per share, position size is 200 divided by 3, which is 66 shares. Once the size is set, the take-profit price determines the reward, and the R:R is just the ratio of the two distances. The calculator does this calculation automatically every time you hit Calculate Trade. The reason R:R does not feed directly into size is that an instrument with a 5 percent ATR needs a wider stop than an instrument with a 1 percent ATR, and the same dollar risk translates to a very different number of shares or lots in each case. Always size against the stop distance, not the ratio.
What is the difference between risk-reward and win rate?
R:R is the geometric ratio between the planned loss and the planned gain on a single trade, measured before the trade opens. Win rate is the empirical percentage of trades you actually close at a profit, measured across a sample of past trades. They are independent inputs that combine into a single number, expected value: EV = (WR × reward) − ((1 − WR) × risk). The R:R determines how high your win rate has to be for the strategy to break even. A 1:2 R:R needs only 33.3 percent, a 1:1 R:R needs 50 percent, a 1:0.5 R:R needs 67 percent. The asymmetry is the point. Most professional discretionary traders run win rates in the 40 to 55 percent range and survive because they pick R:R ratios that make 40 to 55 percent enough. Retail traders often chase 70 to 80 percent win rates with 1:1 setups, then bleed the account because spread and slippage push the real-world breakeven WR above 70 percent. Pick R:R that is friendly to the win rate you actually have, not the win rate you wish you had.
Should I always aim for 1:3 R:R?
No. A 1:3 ratio sounds great in isolation but it requires the target to be three times further from entry than the stop, which on a chart usually means projecting through the most likely resistance and into the next structural level. If the target is unrealistic, the trade ends in a stop-out regardless of how clean the entry was. The right answer is to pick the R:R that matches the actual structure on the chart: if the next major resistance is 1.8 R away, target it for a 1:1.8, do not force a 1:3 that sits past the level. The Conservative template defaults to 1:3 because it is the canonical funded-account target and works well for swing setups where the next structural level genuinely sits three R away. For day trading and scalping the realistic targets are usually 1:1.5 to 1:2. The Monte Carlo on the calculator helps decide: if your historical win rate combined with a 1:2 produces a positive median outcome across 250 trades, that is the right ratio for you, not a fantasy 1:3.
How does Kelly Criterion differ from fixed percent risk?
Fixed percent risk (the standard 1 or 2 percent rule) sizes every trade at the same fraction of the account regardless of edge. Kelly Criterion sizes each trade based on the actual edge of the strategy, computed as f* = (R:R × WR − (1 − WR)) / R:R, where WR is your historical win probability and R:R is the ratio for this setup. Worked through at a 55 percent win rate on a 1:2 setup: Kelly returns 32.5 percent of capital, which sounds enormous because Kelly assumes perfect knowledge of the true win rate. Real retail traders almost never have perfect win-rate estimates, so the standard professional discipline is Half-Kelly (16.25 percent in the example) or Quarter-Kelly (8.1 percent), which dramatically reduces variance and protects against win-rate estimation error. The Pro version of the calculator returns all three (Full, Half and Quarter) so you can see what aggressive Kelly says versus what a sensible practical maximum looks like. For most retail traders, sticking with a fixed 1 to 2 percent rule is genuinely better than Kelly because it controls the worst-case scenario when your win-rate estimate turns out to be wrong.
Can multiple take-profits improve expected value?
Yes, with a caveat. Multiple partial take-profits trade upside cap for hit rate: closing a third at TP1 banks profit early so the partial winner stays a winner even if price reverses before TP2 or TP3, but the average R per closed trade is lower than if you held the whole position to the furthest target. The calculator returns the Weighted Average R:R across all three TP targets so you see the net effect. On a setup with TP1 at 1R (40 percent), TP2 at 2R (40 percent), TP3 at 3R (20 percent), the weighted R:R is roughly 1.8R, which is materially better than a 1:1 single TP and slightly worse than a 1:3 single TP. The right answer depends on your edge. High-confidence setups with a strong structural target should aim for a single 1:3 TP and hold. Lower-confidence setups, especially on choppy intraday charts, benefit from partial exits because banking some profit reduces variance and gives the position room to ride the rest. Test both configurations in the Monte Carlo on the calculator. If the single-TP version produces a worse worst-case across 250 trades, the multi-TP version is mathematically better for you, regardless of how it feels.
What R:R do prop firms actually require?
Most prop firms do not publish a hard R:R requirement, they publish a daily-loss cap (usually 5 percent), a total-loss cap (usually 10 percent), and a profit target (usually 8 to 10 percent in the first phase). What that combination implies, mathematically, is a strategy that produces a positive median outcome at a 1 percent risk per trade and reaches 8 to 10 percent total profit before drawing down 10 percent. The Monte Carlo on the calculator confirms this: at 1 percent risk and 1:2 R:R with a realistic 45 percent win rate, the median outcome across 100 trades is positive and the worst-case drawdown rarely exceeds 8 percent. At 1 percent risk and 1:3 R:R with a 35 percent win rate, the median is also positive and the drawdown profile is even better. Both configurations clear the canonical major funded-account programs, Apex, and funded-account programs evaluations. The configurations that fail are 2 to 3 percent risk per trade (one bad day blows the daily-loss cap) and 1:1 R:R with anything below 60 percent win rate (the win rate is not high enough to overcome the cap). Pick the Conservative template (1 percent, 1:3) and you are inside every published rule set.
Why does breakeven win rate matter more than the profit target?
Because the profit target is a single trade outcome, while the breakeven win rate is a property of the entire strategy across hundreds of trades. A 1:3 setup with a 200 dollar target sounds great in isolation but it is meaningless until you know how often a strategy at that ratio actually fills the target. The breakeven win rate is the threshold below which the strategy bleeds, regardless of any individual trade. At 1:3, the threshold is 25 percent. If your real win rate across a 250-trade sample is 27 percent, you are barely positive after costs. If it is 22 percent, you are losing money even though every win returned a beautiful 1:3. That is the single most important diagnostic on the calculator: not the headline ratio, but the comparison of your historical win rate against the breakeven win rate. Anything where the historical sits at least 8 to 10 percentage points above the breakeven has a real edge. Anything closer than that is variance noise pretending to be edge, and a six-month win-rate drift can flip it negative without warning. Run the calculator with your real win rate plugged into the Kelly box and check the gap. That is the entire conversation about whether the strategy works.