Free Calculator

Trade Return Calculator

Simulate the growth of your account over time based on your win rate, risk, and reward ratio. Visualize your equity curve and prepare for realistic market conditions.

Settings

For every $1 risk, you make $2

Simulate realistic probability

Ending Balance
$10,000.00
Net Profit
$0.00
Max Drawdown
$0.00
-0.00%
Win/Loss
0/0

Equity Curve

Projected balance growth over 0 trades

Run simulation to see equity curve

Trade Log

#
Result
Start Bal
P/L
End Bal
Gain %

No data available. Run simulation to see results.

Validate Your Edge

See if your strategy holds up over 50+ trades with realistic probability simulations.

Master Risk Management

Understand how 1% vs 2% risk impacts your drawdown and long-term profitability.

Visualize Variance

Prepare mentally for losing streaks before they happen with random mode simulations.

What is a Trade Return Calculator?

A Trade Return Calculator is an essential risk management tool designed to help traders visualize the potential growth of their capital over a series of trades. By inputting key metrics such as win rate, risk per trade, and reward-to-risk ratio, traders can simulate thousands of possible outcomes to understand the statistical probability of success.

Unlike simple profit calculators, our tool offers both deterministic and randomized simulations. This allows you to see not just the "perfect scenario" but also realistic fluctuations in your equity curve, helping you prepare for drawdowns and variance inherent in trading.

How to Use This Tool

1

Enter your Starting Balance (e.g., $10,000)

2

Set your Risk per Trade (recommended 0.5% - 2%)

3

Define your Win Rate based on historical performance

4

Choose Random Mode for a realistic simulation

5

Click Calculate to generate your equity curve

6

Export results to CSV for further analysis

Understanding Risk of Ruin

One of the most critical aspects of trading is avoiding the "Risk of Ruin"—the mathematical probability of blowing your account. By using this ROI Calculator, you can experiment with different position sizing strategies. You'll quickly see that risking too much (e.g., 5% per trade) can lead to catastrophic drawdowns even with a good win rate.

Professional traders typically aim for a Risk of Ruin near zero. This is achieved by keeping risk small (1-2%) and maintaining a healthy Reward-to-Risk ratio (minimum 1:1.5 or 1:2).

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I calculate my trading strategy's expectancy?

Expectancy = (win rate × average win) − (loss rate × average loss), measured in R (risk units). A strategy with a 50% win rate and a 2:1 reward-to-risk ratio has an expectancy of (0.5 × 2R) − (0.5 × 1R) = 0.5R — meaning you earn half your risk amount per trade on average. Over 50 trades risking 1% each, that compounds to roughly 25% growth.

What win rate do I need to be profitable?

It depends entirely on your reward-to-risk ratio. The break-even win rate is 1 ÷ (1 + R:R): with a 1:1 ratio you need to win more than 50% of trades, with 2:1 more than 33.3%, and with 3:1 only 25%. This is why traders with modest win rates can be highly profitable — and why win rate alone says nothing about profitability.

What is a good reward-to-risk ratio?

Most systematic traders target between 1.5:1 and 3:1. Higher ratios lower the win rate you need but usually mean fewer trades reach the target, so win rate and reward-to-risk trade off against each other. The best combination is the one your actual trade data supports — test different pairs in this calculator to see how the equity curve responds.

Why does my equity curve look different every time I simulate?

In random mode, the calculator shuffles the order of wins and losses on each run — just like live trading, where the same win rate can arrive as a smooth climb or as a brutal losing streak followed by recovery. Watching many random runs of the same strategy teaches you what normal variance looks like, so a real drawdown doesn't shake you off a profitable system.

How many trades do I need to evaluate a strategy?

At least 50 trades, and ideally 100 or more. Small samples are dominated by luck: a coin-flip strategy can easily win 7 of 10 trades. Around 100 trades, your measured win rate is usually within a few percentage points of the true value, making projections from this calculator meaningfully reliable.

What risk per trade should I use in the simulation?

Simulate with what you actually intend to risk — 0.5-2% per trade is the common range. Then stress-test it: check the worst losing streak in several random runs and ask whether that drawdown would breach your prop firm limit or your own tolerance. If it would, lower the risk percentage, not the strategy.

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