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Trading skills · 6 of 7

Expectancy and position sizing — turning a base rate into risk

Win rate and reward-to-risk combine into expectancy; position sizing turns expectancy into survivable risk.

A trading skill, taught as a rule + its measured base rate. Educational — never a recommendation to buy or sell.

Expectancy is the average result per trade: (win% × avg win) − (loss% × avg loss). It folds the two numbers from lesson one into a single answer — positive expectancy is an edge, negative is a leak, no matter how good the win rate looks alone.

From edge to size

Even a positive-expectancy setup ruins you if a single trade is too large. Position sizing ties the trade to a fixed fraction of risk: decide the dollar risk per trade (say 1% of the account), then size = risk ÷ distance to your stop. The setup gives the stop; sizing gives survival.

Why survival is the real game

A string of losses is guaranteed eventually. Sizing so that a losing streak can’t end you is what keeps you in the game long enough for expectancy to play out. Edges only compound if you’re still there.

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Educational content on trading concepts and their historical base rates, measured on survivorship-free US-stock history. Past statistics do not predict future results; nothing here is investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any security.