Successful Traders Stories

A high win rate is the foundation of success

In the next part of our series evaluating successful FTMO Accounts of our traders, we are looking at the
performance of two traders whose biggest weapon in achieving above-average results was the win rate
of their strategy.

Traders usually look at whether a strategy has a high win rate when building and testing a strategy, or
they focus on a higher RRR and then the win rate doesn't matter as much. Of course, something
different suits everyone, but when you combine an RRR of more than 1 with a high win rate of over 70%,
then success is virtually guaranteed. And this is the case of the traders we will evaluate in today's part of
our series.

For the first trader, we can see an almost perfect balance curve, with only two slight fluctuations, which
could in no way affect his result. The trader was in profit from the beginning of the trading period, which
in most cases has a very positive impact in terms of psychology. You can see that the trader started
slowly and did not overdo it with position sizes right from the beginning, which is only good.

In ten trading days, the trader made a total profit of nearly $22,000, which is a great result for an
account size of $100,000. He didn't even come close to the Maximum Daily Loss or Maximum Loss limits
during that time. This certainly also probably contributed to his mental state, as did the fact that only
two days out of the ten ended in a loss.

The trader executed 82 trades with a total size of 97.78 lots, which is nearly 1.2 lots per trade. With an
account size of $100,000, this means a very conservative approach, even if the trader opened multiple
positions (which he didn't do very often). Combined with a good RRR (2.04) and an excellent trade win
rate of almost 80%, the trader was able to earn almost 20% in a short period of time, even with this
relatively conservative approach.

The journal shows that he is an intraday trader who usually does not keep positions open overnight. The
exception was made on two positions, one of which he held for a day and a half and the other, a rather
large one, he held for over two days, but both ended with good profits despite negative swaps. The
shortest position was held for only a few minutes, which could be considered scalping. For all trades,
even the shortest ones, the trader had a Stop Loss set, and in most cases, he also set a Profit Target,
which we rate very positively.
The trader traded both long and short positions, but he was much more successful when speculating on
the decline of the instrument. The Trader's favorite instrument was gold (XAUUSD), which has long been
one of the most traded symbols for FTMO Traders. The second most traded symbol was the currency
pair GBPJPY, but in this case, there were only three trades divided into multiple positions. One of these
trades was the one that the trader held for the two days in question. Patience clearly paid off in this
regard.
The balance curve of the second trader doesn't look so great anymore, but it is still true that every
FTMO Trader would like to see a similar development of his FTMO Account. Again, the trader was in the
green right from the beginning of the trading period and only scored one series of three trades in which
he recorded a significant loss.

Although the profit of over $20,000 with an account size of USD 400,000 is not as impressive as in the
previous case, it should be taken in to account that the trader achieved it in just 7 days, and none of
these days ended in a loss. The second trader did record a lower RRR (1.38) and had a lower success rate
(still a great 72.09%), but it required fewer trades for him to achieve a similar result in absolute terms.

This is also due to the larger open positions, a total of 139.5 lots for 43 trades, or 3.2 lots per trade. As in
the previous case, this is a rather conservative approach given the size of the account. For
completeness, it can only be added that the second trader did not have a problem with the Maximum
Daily Loss and Maximum Loss limits either.

The trader opened positions ranging from two to five lots, and only rarely opened more positions in one
trade, which only confirms his conservative approach. When a trader does not feel the need to risk large
positions to make good profits, again this can have a very positive effect on his psychological setup. This
is because he risks a small percentage on each position and is aware that even a longer series of losses
cannot put his account in any significant danger.

In this case, the trader recorded a maximum loss per trade of only $1,550, which is less than 0.4% of the
account, and the trader can feel very comfortable with that. Given that the trader held his positions for
a very short period of time, his profitable trades are not staggeringly high either, but it was enough for
an above-average result. Again, we commend the placement of stop losses on most positions.

Also, for this trader, the most popular instrument was gold (XAUUSD), on which the trader opened the
vast majority of trades, and the currency pair GBPJPY was also a success here, for which the trader
opened three trades. And to make the similarity between accounts even less obvious, this trader was
also much more successful in opening short positions.

Today's examples of traders’ performance clearly show that to achieve an exceptional result, a trader
does not have to open extremely large positions which could result in unnecessarily large losses every
time. A conservative approach, combined with a good strategy that can generate a sufficient number of
profitable trades, can provide the trader with the necessary psychological state of mind which can help
to achieve very good results.

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