How We Calculate Win Rate (And Why Open Trades Don't Count)

Every setup on ChartWyz shows a win rate and an occurrence count next to it. Both numbers follow one rule strictly: only closed trades count. If a backtested trade is still open — price hasn't hit either the stop or the target yet — it's excluded from the win rate entirely.

Why this matters more than it sounds like it should

It's tempting to count an open trade as a 'win' if it's currently sitting in profit. Don't — an open position can still reverse and hit the stop before it hits the target. Counting it early inflates the win rate with trades that haven't actually resolved, which is exactly the kind of quiet distortion that makes a backtest look better than the strategy actually performs going forward.

So the formula is deliberately narrow: win rate = wins ÷ (wins + losses), where wins and losses are only ever counted once a trade has closed — hit its stop, hit its target, or been closed manually inside the backtest window. Occurrences follow the same rule: it's a count of resolved trades, not total signals fired.

What to actually check before trusting a number

• Occurrence count — a 70% win rate on 6 closed trades is not the same claim as 70% on 150.
• Stop and target percentages — win rate is asymmetric by design; a wider target than stop needs a lower win rate to break even, and vice versa. ChartWyz shows both so you can judge the number in context, not in isolation.
• Timeframe and lookback — a setup's win rate on 1D data over two years and its win rate on 1H data over six months are different claims about different market conditions.

None of this is about making the numbers look better or worse — it's about making sure the number means what it says it means before you build a decision on top of it.