How to Discover Trading Patterns with Statistics
Trading on gut feeling doesn’t work
Your brain has a negativity bias. It is an old survival mechanism that keeps you alert to danger, but in trading it works against you. You remember losing trades far better than winning trades. That gives you a distorted view of your performance. You may feel like you are losing almost every trade while your P&L for the month might still be green.
Those negative feelings trigger emotions like fear, stress, and frustration. Emotions hurt execution, which then reinforces the belief that you are doing badly. The only way to break that loop is to trade based on hard data and take emotions out of the equation.
The opposite can happen too. A couple of wins in a row can create euphoria and overconfidence. You start to believe trading is easy, size up too fast, and then one bad trade wipes out your account.
Logging and reviewing every trade gives you real insight. You quickly see that your intuition is often wrong. Patterns appear that you would have missed otherwise: maybe you perform better on Tuesdays than Mondays, or your breakout strategy fails on that one ticker. Those insights help you stay grounded and focus on the setups that actually perform.
The metrics that matter
Win rate isn’t everything. A trader with a 70% win rate but tiny winners and massive losers can still be unprofitable. Always look at win rate together with average win and average loss.
Risk-reward ratio. If you win €2 for every €1 you risk (2:1), you can be profitable even with a 40% win rate. Usually, the higher your risk-reward, the lower your win rate. The key is to find the balance that fits your style and keeps your edge positive.
Expectancy. Expectancy combines the realized risk-reward of every trade. It tells you how much you expect to win or lose per trade on average. If expectancy is positive, your strategy works over the long run. Most beginners obsess over win rate, but expectancy is far more important because it mixes probability and size of outcomes into one number.
Where can you still improve?
Digging into your stats shows where you consistently outperform and where you fall behind. These perspectives give you quick clarity:
- Per strategy: Compare setups (breakout, reversal, pullback…) and see which ones actually deliver.
- Per ticker: Some assets simply respond better to your playbook. Measuring per ticker helps you focus on the names that pay you most.
- Per time of day: Market dynamics shift throughout the session. Looking at performance per block shows when you should be active and when you’re better off waiting.
- Per weekday: Volume and volatility change during the week. Checking results per day highlights if one day consistently drags you down.
TradeLogger lets you combine these filters. You can zoom in on questions like “Which ticker gives me the best breakout trades?” or “Which combination costs me money?”
Practical example
Imagine your stats reveal:
- Breakout strategy: 40% win rate, 1:2.3 risk-reward → profitable
- Reversal strategy: 50% win rate, 1:0.8 risk-reward → losing money
- Mondays: 30% win rate, Tuesdays: 65% win rate
- Before 15:45 you lose frequently, between 16:00 and 16:30 you make most of your gains
With that information you can optimize immediately:
- Focus on breakout setups and paper trade the reversal strategy until the numbers improve.
- Skip Mondays unless an A+ setup appears; only trade when conviction is high.
- Stay patient until after 15:45 and be extra sharp between 16:00 and 16:30.
Without TradeLogger’s deep analytics these patterns would stay hidden. With data you double down on what works and drop what doesn’t.
Start today
TradeLogger is launching soon to help Dutch day traders and swing traders collect and analyze every stat they need to grow into consistent, profitable traders. Join the waitlist and get an exclusive discount when you become a member.