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How to still be profitable by losing 70% of your trades!
Success is NOT all about having a high win rate.
For example, you can lose 70% of your trades and still walk away profitable, if you play the game smart.
The myth of high win rates
Most new traders chase a high win rate like it’s the holy grail.
But the real key isn’t how often you win, it’s how much you win when you’re right versus how little you lose when you’re wrong.
It’s all about your risk-to-reward ratio.
What is risk-to-reward?
Risk-to-reward (or R:R) is the ratio between how much you’re risking vs how much you risk in order to gain.
For example, if you risk $100 to make $300, your risk-to-reward ratio is 1:3.
That means even if you lose more trades than you win, you can still come out in the blue or green (depending on your interface showing the color of profitable trades)
Let’s break this down with a real-world example.
The 30% win rate example
Let’s say you pleace 10 trades.
- You risk $100 per trade.
- Your target is to profit $300 per trade (1:3 R:R).
- After your 10 trades, you win just 3 out of 10 trades (30% win rate).
- And unfortunately, you lose the other 7 trades.
Here’s how the numbers play out:
✅ 3 winning trades x $300 profit = $900
❌ 7 losing trades x $100 loss = $700
Result:
$900 (wins) – $700 (losses) = $200 profit
So in this scenario, you lost 70% of the time and still ended up profitable.
Now imagine scaling and compounding the profits over time with this type of rr.
Why this works
This works because your wins are bigger than your losses.
You’re giving yourself room for error.
As long as you have a strategy that’s works with your low risk, high reward ratio, you don’t have to be right all the time,
you just have to be disciplined in tradng the strategy and not let it mess your mindset when you’re going through more losing streaks than winning ones.
The mindset shift you need
If you practice this risk management strategy. then you would need to stop obsessing over being “right” and start focusing on being profitable.
Here’s what you’ll need to pull this off:
- Patience to wait for high-R:R setups.
- Discipline to stick to your stop loss.
- Confidence to accept being wrong more often than right.
If you can also handle all that emotionally, you’re in a way better position than someone who wins 8 out of 10 trades but has a tiny R:R like 2:1 (which means a few losses can put you in the red.)
So what’s the catch?
This strategy isn’t for everyone.
It requires:
- Dealing with frequent losses (which can feel uncomfortable).
- Not changing your plan when things get shaky.
- Playing the long game, not chasing quick wins.
But for those who can manage their emotions and stick to the plan, this is how alot of pros play the game.
To wrap it up
You don’t need to win all the time.
You just need to be smart when you do win, and even smarter when you lose.
If your wins are 3x bigger than your losses, you can be wrong most of the time and still end the week in profit.
As we’ve seen worked out it’s also mathematically logical.
So next time you’re stressing over your win rate, take a step back and ask:
“Am I playing the game to be right… or to be profitable?”
Drop a comment if this made you rethink your trading mindset.