What Your Trading Style Says About You: High Win-Rate vs. High R-Multiple
It’s the first Sunday of the month, which means I’m unlocking a paid post for everyone.
Today’s post is from Lawrence — a trader some of you might recognize from this earlier post. I’ve had the pleasure of coaching him since last year.
He’s based in Florida and made the bold move to leave a solid career as an IT engineer at a major utility company to pursue trading.
Now, he’s a full-time futures day trader, working with prop firm accounts.
Lawrence is one of the most vibrant traders I’ve worked with. He brings a strategic mindset to the table — something I resonate with. Together with his open mindset and curiosity, the coaching process is not only effective but also genuinely enjoyable.
Thanks for sharing it with us, Lawrence.
Ever wonder what your trading style says about you?
This newsletter will show you how Win Rate Willy (High WR traders) trade to feel safe, while Risky Ricky (High R-Multiple traders) chase glory and give back profits for ego.
We’ll unpack:
How each style hides comfort traps that block your growth
Why Expected Value exposes the truth about both approaches
How to align your mindset with probabilities, not feelings
By the end, you’ll know exactly how to stop hiding behind your win rate or R-multiple and start using them as tools to reach your true potential in trading and life.
Win Rate Willy
Win Rate Willy will represent traders who obsess over or simply prefer a high win rate to feel secure.
But how much time and profit can be lost due to only 1-2 trading losses?
Win Rate Willy is most likely to avoid losses to preserve his ego.
Ego is extremely costly if you’re lowering your reward to avoid developing a healthy relationship with losses.
Probabilistic thinking doesn’t thrive here, making Win Rate Willy susceptible to short-term market fluctuations, which makes long-term and probabilistic thinking difficult. Without probabilistic and long-term thinking, performing at a high level is virtually impossible.
“I’m trying to make money” is often the excuse Win Rate Willy uses, but the Expected Value math exposes the flaw:
EV (Expected Value) math shows what you will make on average over many trades. It is like checking if your game is worth playing over time.
An 80% win rate with a 0.5R average return has less profit over 100 trades than a 50% win rate with a 2R return (clean EV math confirms):
80% win, 0.5R: 80 x 0.5R = 40R – 20 x 1R = 20R net
50% win, 2R: 50 x 2R = 100R – 50 x 1R = 50R net
Even though the first method wins more often (feels safe), it makes less money.
The second method wins less often (triggers emotions) but makes more money over time.
Key lesson:
In trading, it’s not just about winning often; it’s about how much you make when you win vs. how much you lose when you lose.
When you obsess over High Win-Rate: You’re trading real wealth for the comfort of avoiding self-mastery. That’s a costly trade in my opinion.
Trading wealth for comfort and loss aversion is like risking $1 to make $0.80, a negative R-multiple trade.
See how our values are reflected in the chart?
If I had any advice for the Win Rate Willies out there:
You’re a formidable adversary against yourself. Don’t run. Face yourself head-on and do the shadow work. Work towards self-mastery, high self-awareness, and emotional intelligence. Take that information and give it a positive role in your trading plan and life.
Risky Ricky
Just so we’re on the same page, “R-multiple” is how much you make compared to what you risk. For example, risking $100 to make $200 is a 2R trade.
Risky Ricky is a stubborn trader; a character that I, myself, embody, so I know Risky Ricky quite well. He wants ALL or NOTHING.
This is the “black or white” mindset, as Sara calls it, where we think in extremes, not understanding or appreciating the value of balance (in my case, ‘taking partials’)
The same 'black or white' mindset that emotional volatility feeds off. You tell yourself: “Price could possibly go here,” or “I could make this much if this happens”.
I love Risky Ricky’s optimism, but it can also be costly.
If I could, I would like the Risky Rickies out there to ask themselves:
Is a few ticks worth jeopardizing the entire trade?
How much are you willing to give back just to be right or feel validated?
One thing about Risky Ricky is that he’s more prone to thinking in possibilities.
Incurring loss after loss, he often starts “behind the 8-ball,” emotionally.
How many times have you let a solid profit go red?
At some point, that’s outright irresponsible, even if the strategy is valid.
The fact is that taking partials doesn't stroke the ego enough, nor does it provide enough validation. Most of all, it doesn’t provide enough satisfaction of being right (even though trading isn’t a right or wrong game, but an infinite game that can only be won by staying in play).
In other words, keeping your account long enough for the probabilities of your system to play out to make you financially independent.
I do have a few more questions for the Risky Rickies out there:
If you were to calculate how much you could've made by taking partials over 100 or even 1,000 trades, how big do you think that number would be? I can tell you it increases with the trade.
Lastly, would that be enough to convince you to start taking partials?
Most of the time, Risky Ricky needs a catalyst that doesn’t happen daily for big moves, making consistency challenging for a day trader.
The Truth About High Win-Rate & High R-Multiple
All this to say:
Neither metric matters if it’s your escape from discomfort.
Reach your full potential by pushing past your comfort zone, while also knowing exactly what your edge can’t deliver.
Setting proper expectations, backed by backtested data, will help you accept the outcomes of your trades.
With that being said, test your system and yourself in different market conditions, collecting data to enhance your technical edge, and observing how you handle various scenarios to sharpen your mental edge.
Once you identify the limits of each edge, it becomes a game of tug-of-war between your mental and your technical edge.
Push your mind to trust your system even when the noise (price action) between your stop-loss and profit-target may give conflicting signals.
Your system has limits on what it can deliver, so place your profit target a tick before that limit.
Finding your sweet spot means pulling just enough on both edges without losing balance. This is how you realize your FULL potential as a trader.
A True Test of a Trader’s Mental Edge!
The Noise Tests Your Mental Edge.
The Noise refers to all the price action that occurs between your stop-loss and your profit target.
Most traders lose here because:
They interpret noise as signals and make unnecessary interruptions.
They forget why they entered in the first place, losing sight of the bigger picture.
They hop in and out, deviating from their plan, stacking losses and emotional damage while the first trade was still valid and just needed time to work out.
Learning to sit with discomfort and letting your trade play out according to your plan, even with the risk of losing, is where you truly grow and test your mental limits to reach your full potential.
It’s normal to fear losing, and with time, that fear will ease. Not disappear, but ease. But if you avoid losing at all costs, you’ll also avoid the challenges that sharpen you.
These are the same challenges that will teach you to think in probabilities, shifting your mindset to view trading as a game of odds, not just wins and losses.
Thinking in probabilities is the only way to manage your emotions during short-term P&L swings.
The real goal is to remain consistent over a long enough timeframe. The longer the timeframe, the better the results, provided you take enough well-executed trades to allow your edge to play out.
If you embrace data and discomfort, you will unlock the next level of growth and build genuine trust in your edge.
How to Reach Your Full Potential?
Master your system by backtesting 1,000 times. Yes, 1,000 times — same set-up, same time-frame, same entries, exits, and risk.
Execution needs to become second nature. This will free up mental space to think and observe current market conditions and your mental state.
Here are a few actionable steps to elevate your mental and technical edge:
Mark up your charts while your setup is forming.
Journal your thoughts as your trade unfolds.
Highlight exactly what part of the trade brought out your emotions the most & why.
Don’t trust your memory when you trade. Draw it. Write it down. Notice how it makes you feel, as your true edge emerges when your strategy challenges your comfort zone.
After you get a decent amount of logs, compare them to each other and rate your consistency. This will be your baseline from here on.
Remember, your mental edge is sharpened when you feel antsy, doubt creeps in, and noise distracts you, but you still acknowledge, cater to, and sit with it.
This is developed through heightening your awareness by journaling about the events, conditions, and actions that cause anxiety and doubt to creep in. Also, about how these events, conditions, and actions make you so uncomfortable, which will all be discovered by going through that discomfort.
The end result?
Over time, you won't only expect and plan for potential discomfort, but you’ll also welcome its arrival.
Final Words
Your win rate and R-multiple are nothing more than tools, not shields.
Use them to measure, adjust, and refine your edge.
Don’t let them become the mask you hide behind to avoid the real work of growth.
Here’s a 5-minute reflection exercise:
Write down your current win rate and average R:R.
Ask: Am I using these numbers to hide from losses or feed my ego?
Identify a trade you skipped recently due to fear of losing or a strong trade that you let go red.
Journal what discomfort you are avoiding.
Set Daily Trading Goals.
— Lawrence
Connect with Me
Follow for daily trade recaps, live trading, and trading psychology insights:
Instagram: @lawrencetheinvestor
YouTube: Lawrence The Investor
More from Lawrence:
That's a really insightful and reletable post, thank you :-)
I would count myself also as Risky Ricky. I given away so much good RR just for hoping of more RR or just the Trade reaching my predefined TP, which at the end didn't happened. And i wasn't able to accept that this is what the market gives me today.
Just today, had a potential 10R Trade which moved to 8R and consolidated there. I trailed it at 6R (which i finally got) but wasn't able to accept the limits and manually close it in the consolidation, which at the end costs me "real" 2R. I knew i should have closed out of experience but constantly refuse to do so, just out of greed and irrational hope.