# Analytics: review your trading

> Scalpel's Analytics view: equity curve, win rate, expectancy, profit factor, R distribution, every trade, results by symbol and hour, and a trader grade.

Source: https://scalpeltrade.com/guides/analytics
Guide 6.4, SIM and LIVE. Intermediate, 7 min read.
Checked with Scalpel 1.12.8 on 2026-10-15. By Scalpel Team.

**In short:**

Pick **Analytics** in the header's **VIEW** picker to review every closed trade in the current mode. **Overview** shows net P&L, win rate, [expectancy](https://scalpeltrade.com/guides/glossary#expectancy) in R, [profit factor](https://scalpeltrade.com/guides/glossary#profit-factor), total R and max drawdown over an equity curve and an R distribution; **Trades** lists every trade; **Breakdowns** splits results by symbol and by New York hour; **Goals** grades you against fixed targets. SIM and LIVE each keep their own journal, all net of fees.

A trading journal answers the questions your memory gets wrong: do you make money at 07:00 or only after the open, on $2 stocks or $8 ones, and are your losers really 1R? Scalpel keeps the journal for you. Every trade it closes, by a key, a stop, a take-profit or a flatten, is written to the current mode's journal with its entry, exit, size, fees and R.

**Before you start:**

- Some closed trades in the mode you want to review. SIM is fine; SIM and LIVE are kept apart ([guide 6.1](https://scalpeltrade.com/guides/paper-trading-sim)).
- [R multiples](https://scalpeltrade.com/guides/glossary#r-multiple) understood ([guide 5.4](https://scalpeltrade.com/guides/r-multiples)): most of these numbers are in R.

## Open Analytics

### 1. Switch VIEW to Analytics

Click **VIEW** in the header (1) and choose **Analytics**. The desks give way to the dashboard; switch back with **Trade**. Your positions and stops keep running while you look.

*Screenshot: The VIEW picker open: Trade and Analytics (1). Demo data.*

### 2. Check which journal you are reading

The bar at the top says **ANALYTICS**, then the mode in a badge (**SIM** in blue, **LIVE** in orange), the four tabs, and the number of trades on the right. Analytics always reads the current MODE's journal: to see your LIVE trades, switch MODE to LIVE. With no trades yet in that mode it says so.

*Screenshot: Analytics before the first trade in SIM.*

### 3. Read the Overview

The six large boxes are the headline numbers. Below them, the **EQUITY CURVE** and the **R DISTRIBUTION**.

*Screenshot: Overview on a 20-trade SIM journal: +$252.13 net, 55% win rate, +0.3R expectancy, profit factor 1.57. Demo data.*

### 4. Find the leaks in Breakdowns

Open **Breakdowns** and look for the symbol or the hour where the money goes. See the sections below.

### 5. Check the Goals

Open **Goals** to see where you stand against the four targets and which grade that earns.

## The headline numbers

| Box | What it is | In the example |
|---|---|---|
| **NET P&L** | Every closed trade's realized P&L added up, after fees | +$252.13 |
| **WIN RATE** | Winners as a share of winners plus losers. Trades that closed at exactly $0 are left out | 55% |
| **EXPECTANCY** | The average R per trade: what one more trade is worth, in units of risk | +0.3R |
| **PROFIT FACTOR** | Dollars won divided by dollars lost. Above 1 makes money; Inf means no losers yet | 1.57 |
| **TOTAL R** | Every trade's R added up | +5.1R |
| **MAX DRAWDOWN** | The biggest fall of your running P&L from a high to a later low, in dollars | -$105.14 |

**The equity curve** is your running net P&L, one step per trade (not per day). It is green when you are ahead overall and red when you are behind, with a faint line at zero. The red strip under it is the **drawdown**: how far below your best point you were after each trade. Long red stretches are losing streaks.

**The R distribution** counts your trades in seven buckets: **<-2R**, **-2..-1**, **-1..0**, **0..1**, **1..2**, **2..3** and **3R+**. Red bars are losers, green bars winners. A healthy scalper's losers sit almost all in **-1..0**: stops honoured. Bars in **-2..-1** or **<-2R** are trades where the stop was moved, ignored or gapped.

**Note.**

R needs the risk you entered with. Scalpel records it on every SIM and LIVE entry; a position it adopted from TWS takes the default stop distance as its 1R. A trade with no recorded risk, such as an older LIVE trade journaled before Scalpel recorded LIVE risk, has no R: it counts in the dollar figures but not in expectancy, total R, the R distribution or the R ratios.

## Every other stat

Under the charts are three rows of smaller boxes.

*Screenshot: The secondary stats on the same journal. Demo data.*

| Stat | Meaning |
|---|---|
| **SHARPE** | Average R divided by how much your R varies, per trade. Higher is steadier. Not annualised |
| **SQN** | Sharpe times the square root of the number of trades. Green above 1.6 |
| **SORTINO** | Like Sharpe, but only losing trades count as variation |
| **KELLY** | The share of capital the Kelly formula would stake given your win rate and payoff. A curiosity, not a sizing rule |
| **RECOVERY** | Net P&L divided by max drawdown: how many times over you have earned back your worst dip |
| **EXPECTANCY $** | Net P&L per trade in dollars |
| **AVG WIN**, **AVG LOSS** | The average winner and loser in dollars |
| **PAYOFF** | Average win divided by average loss. 1.28 means winners are 1.28 times the size of losers |
| **LARGEST WIN**, **LARGEST LOSS** | The single best and worst trade |
| **COMMISSIONS** | Total fees paid ([guide 6.3](https://scalpeltrade.com/guides/commissions)) |
| **TRADES**, **WINS**, **LOSSES** | The counts |
| **WIN STREAK**, **LOSS STREAK** | The longest run of each. A $0 trade does not break a streak |
| **TRADING DAYS** | New York dates with at least one closed trade |

## Trades: every trade, sortable

**Trades** lists the journal, newest first. Type in **Filter symbol...** to show one ticker, and use **All**, **Wins** and **Losses** to filter by outcome. Click any column heading to sort by it; click again to reverse. The footer adds up the rows you are looking at, so filtering to **Losses** shows exactly what your losers cost.

*Screenshot: Trades, newest first, with the totals for the rows shown. Demo data.*

Two columns read differently from what you might expect: **BALANCE** is your running total of net P&L at that trade, not your account balance, and **TIME** is the close time in New York time, the same clock as the header and the orders panel. Sorting by **TIME** puts the trades in the order they closed.

## Breakdowns: where the money comes from

*Screenshot: Breakdowns: by symbol, the R distribution, and net P&L by New York hour. Demo data.*

- **BY SYMBOL** shows trades, net, win rate and total R for each ticker, best net first. Click a heading to sort. One ticker carrying the whole result is luck you cannot repeat.
- **NET P&L BY HOUR (ET)** has a bar for each hour you traded, by the time each trade closed in New York: **07** is 07:00 to 07:59 ET. Green hours made money, red ones lost it. Is your edge in the pre-market and the first hour, or do you give it back later in the morning? This chart answers that.

## Goals and the trader grade

*Screenshot: Goals: met targets in green, the rest in gold, and the grade. Demo data.*

| Goal | Target |
|---|---|
| **ACCURACY** (your win rate) | 75% |
| **PAYOFF (WIN/LOSS)** | 2.0 |
| **PROFIT FACTOR** | 2.0 |
| **EXPECTANCY** | Positive R |

The **TRADER GRADE** comes from accuracy and payoff together:

| Grade | Accuracy | Payoff |
|---|---|---|
| **Pro** | 70% or more | 1.0 or more |
| **Advanced** | 60% or more | 1.5 or more |
| **Beginner** | 50% or more | 1.0 or more |
| **Novice** | Anything else | |

The targets are deliberately hard. A grade on 20 trades says little; on 200 it starts to mean something.

## What can go wrong

- **Your LIVE trades are missing.** Analytics reads the current mode. Switch MODE to LIVE.
- **SIM history survived a reset.** That is by design: Reset SIM account clears the paper ledger, not the journal.
- **R columns show a dash.** The trade had no recorded entry risk, so it has no R.
- **Too few trades to judge.** A few dozen trades can look great or terrible by chance. Trading this way is difficult and carries a real risk of loss; judge your process on a large sample in SIM before you trust a number with money.

## Questions

**Does Analytics include commissions?**

Yes. Every P&L figure and R multiple is net of fees: SIM's estimate from your commission plan, or the real commission Interactive Brokers reports in LIVE. The total is the COMMISSIONS box.

**Are SIM and LIVE trades mixed?**

No. Each mode has its own journal. Analytics shows the one for the mode in the header's MODE picker.

**What is a good expectancy?**

Anything above 0R makes money over many trades, before slippage you did not have in SIM. A small positive number on hundreds of trades is worth more than a big one on twenty.

**Why does profit factor say Inf?**

You have no losing trades yet, so there is nothing to divide by.

**Can I export my trades?**

Not from the view. The journal is a plain text file per mode in Scalpel's data folder, journal/sim-trades.jsonl and journal/live-trades.jsonl, one trade per line.