Exactly, this makes me think about a roulette player placing a token on the 2nd dozen bet. You bet one token to win two. He thinks, i have a good RR so let's play. slippage and commissions = zero numbers.
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@SBtrader82
If you assume continuous market participation and use no filters or directional bias...Using a normally distributed market, your number are going to be pretty close.
In late 2018, I started to understand the value of standard deviation and the importance behind the Black Scholes model.
Using a simple 1 day standard deviation based on implied volatility and using no filters or directional bias, you can see with the calculations below a 2.8/1 WL ratio can be obtained. The calculations are made by not merging quarterly contracts (4 years worth)... Its also assumes continuous market participation and only trades one contract/order. I always include commissions and slippage is minimal at this time frame.
Capture
Although its not the best equity curve, it still produces decent profits. I stopped tracking it this way back in March of 2020, because I learned there are 2 ways you can improve the drawdowns and produce better profits. One is the fact that Volatility has skew. The other I will keep to myself. LOL
At one point, I tested this back nearly 15 years and it never stopped working. So to all those that think strategies stop working...Some things never change. Thanks Karl Pearson and you Black Scholes dudes.
So getting to the point...with a better understanding and using the 2 improvements, you can increase this to about 3.5/1 WL. This is very close to what you are assuming is best. Also knowing how to calculate standard deviation under different time frames, you will start to see this 3.5/1 keeps working at higher a lower time frames. That of course is limited as you near the extremities. There a additional factors that most be considered both ways.
In short, I agree that 3.5/1 is a very solid consistent ratio...But.
What happens when you add filters, directional bias, etc?
I have strats that out perform the one above and have higher and lower W/L ratios.
I might go as far to say its a median ratio looking at many strategies, But I wouldn't limit yourself!
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In other words, the optimal win loss ratio depends on the signal itself. It's also going to depend on your own goals. This is where other metrics become necessary. What was the max drawdown of the strategy? Can your account handle that? If you are holding for long periods of time what is the risk adjusted returns? It's not very useful when one person is talking about a market making strategy and someone else is showing a CTA strategy. They have completely different goals.
Which to the original point is why it is important to understand how these factors impact the overall system. Traders using low R strategies think they have a predictive signal when the expectancy of the system is largely due to taking on excess risk. That matters when you get into the drawdowns, and that's why it is so incredibly common to see these traders blow out. It's simply not suitable for the size and goal of the majority of retail accounts.
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The discussion is simple though...Do the markets have preferred ratios. We are simple collaborating the ideal that one does exist...That its possible the market is structured around a ratio that exists for some balanced statistical reason. We already know you can make money using such methods, why not make it a fun exercise right?
More often when finding edges, peeps will look to find what the market will give them. Sometimes its nice to set your own terms of what you would like to get and then wrap the market around that. I mentioned this once before on another thread and was questioned by a fellow successful trader (One that many would regard highly here) how the ideal of this was confusing to him. I could tell he was very off put by this and felt his scepticism. But the simple truth is a lot of good edges live around the 3.5 mark, and I agree this is a good goal to live around. I do not in any way limit myself there, but it can be a gauge if you will.
So back to your quote "In other words, the optimal win loss ratio depends on the signal itself".
Optimal to your signal or the Market itself? Can you tell the difference?
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That depends on your definition of "optimal". Optimal total net profit? Optimal max drawdown? Optimal Sharpe ratio?
Which just proves my point. Optimal all depends on what you're trying to accomplish with your trading strategy. If your strategy maximizes total net profit but has a drawdown equal to that first, is it really optimal? Well, I can only tell you that I'm certainly not going to trade that strategy.
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With all due respect, you have not disproved our exercise.
We are not debating you can get a strategy/edge to produce numbers that fit your capital or any other parameters needed to fit your scenario. This point any profitable trader already knows.
We are simply asking if there is a preferred ratio the market is structured around. One that is optimal for statistical reasons based off a normally distributed (or not) market. A balance if you will.
3.5 has been proposed here...Can you disprove this. You do seem all against the notion of it.
Remember a theory is treated with respect until disproven JMHO
Either way, I respect your opinion. I'm also not sure there is an optimal ratio either, but I do like the discussion.
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Right so let me try this again. You have to define optimal. Without a strict definition of what qualifies as optimal there's nothing to prove or disprove because you don't have a full theory. There's no function for us to optimize.
@WoodyFox that's really interesting... in the thread "the war of two world" someone made a similar experiment in another market, but the results were not so positive. I am glad to discover that my intuition about the optimal risk reward can be backtested in the market.
Can you explain how you take the trades in your experiment? you mentioned that there is no directional bias, do you mean that you take random trades that can be either long or short?
JMHO
