Topic: How does the Trade Distribution chart count trades?

Paraphrased Q: What does the Trade Distribution chart count if lots are added to a postion?

A: the Trade Distribution chart only counts transactions that are Close, Reduce, or Reverse. So if it Adds a position to the winner, that previous existing winner is not counted as a winner at the time of Adding; it will be counted as a win or loss at the time of Close (or Reduce or Reverse).
Also if it adds several lots to the position then closes them all at once, that will be counted as 1 trade.

Re: How does the Trade Distribution chart count trades?

from another thread, moved to this thread:

jgp wrote:

thank you, Krog, for your speedy reply about your Trade Distribution Charts. i'm still confused, though. As I understood it, on the number-of-trades chart each addition must somehow be counted as a trade [otherwise where do all those small profit/loss trades come from?]; doesn't the sums-chart present number of trades times resultant of each trade? And for some strategies, almost all the total profit/loss results from many virtually identical small profit/loss trades. So, I supposed that the FSB SL and TP strategy settings had to be set so as to allow for those sums, not just the value of those many small profit/loss trades.  Doesn't the FST-AE take those FSB SL/TP settings that were optimized for the total [original plus additions] and apply the exact same SL/TP setting to each addition?? Still confused as to where all those small profit/loss trades [which sometimes account for nearly all the profit/loss] come from.

Re: How does the Trade Distribution chart count trades?

The way I think of it, I think that FSB considers a trade as an Open transaction later followed by a Close (or Reduce or Reverse) transaction that results in real profit or loss to the account. Anything in between like adding lots does not count as a trade since they don't change the account balance.

If you have small profit losses, it's could be cases where the strategy Reverses, like on an opposite signal. Often, I've found the Reversal comes almost at the initial entry. Since FSB closes the trade to go in the opposite direction, it counts as a trade with a profit or loss. But that is only my guess -- if it's true, you would probably see it in the Journal, there would be a lot of "Reverse" or "Reduce" transactions with small amounts in the "Profit Loss" column. I found it helpful Mr Popov has added "Journal by Positions without Transfers" view for the Journal, it removes the Transfers.

Another way to verify (or prove a bug) is dabbler's method of exporting to Excel and sorting by Transaction:
Export > Positions without Transfers ...
save to your computer
open in excel
select the column titles and all the data
Data > Sort By ... then choose "Transaction", or "Profit Loss"

If you sort by Profit Loss, then you can go to the middle where the small profit and losses are. If there are no Close / Reduce / Reverse transactions, but you see a high count on Trade Distribution chart, that would suggest a possible bug. Then please post, if you can add simple strategy that shows it, I'll look into it.

If you sort by Transaction, look for Close / Reduce / Reverse, then check if they have small profit / losses.

Re: How does the Trade Distribution chart count trades?

" ... doesn't the sums-chart present number of trades times resultant of each trade?  ...'

Yes, the sums-chart (Accumulated Amount) shows the total for trades that resulted in the profit or loss.
Ex, strat has 10 stopped out trades at -18 pips, 3 closed trades at 7 pips, and 4 trades that hit target at 20 pips. On the chart you would see:
at -18: a red line up to 180  (10 x 18, and red because they're losses)
at    7: a green line up to 21 (3 x 7, green because they're wins)
at   20: a green line up to 80 (4 x 20)

The main point of this view, I found most strategies are bell-shaped, centered around 0, so there's a tall line at 0 which draws the eye, and the few very big losses or winners don't stand out. This view helps put it in perspective, the break evens disappear, and the amount of red (losses) vs green (wins) is easier to see.

Re: How does the Trade Distribution chart count trades?

" ... And for some strategies, almost all the total profit/loss results from many virtually identical small profit/loss trades. ..."

I don't know, I've found the opposite. Most of my profitable strategies show Balance line diagonally and very choppy going upwards, ending up ex. 500 pips after 100 trades. But then looking the Trade Distribution chart, the top 2 winners would be 260 and 240 -- meaning the top 2 out of 100 accounted for all the profit, the other 98 trades must have all balanced out to 0.

Re: How does the Trade Distribution chart count trades?

Thanks, Krog. You've given me a lot to chew on.  Actually, I've been trying to develop strategies that yield a semi-monotonically increasing profit curve, with many small profit-steps and few small loss-steps, with hardly any large profit/losses, and for whatever reasons your charts seem to be a big help. The immediate issue is how to get these strategies to work on a DemoAcct the way they do on FSB.