Track your trades in Rs.

Why results get measured in R

R is the unit of initial risk. If you entered at $50 with a stop at $48, then 1R is $2 per share, and every outcome on that trade can be expressed as a multiple of it. A clean stop-out is −1R. An exit at $55 is +2.5R.

The value of the unit is that it makes trades comparable across sizes and instruments. A $500 gain and a $5,000 gain are the same trade if you risked ten times as much on the second — dollars obscure that, R does not. It is the only way to look at a track record spanning years of changing account size and see the edge rather than the balance.

A worked example

Entry at $50, stop at $48, exit at $55. Initial risk is $2 per share, the realised move is $5, so the trade closed at +2.5R.

Whether that was 100 shares or 2,000 does not change the score. Log fifty trades this way and the average tells you something dollars cannot: a +0.4R average across fifty trades is a real, measurable edge regardless of what the account was worth at the time.

Where this calculator misleads you

R is anchored to the initial stop, so a moved stop corrupts the measurement. Widening a stop mid-trade to avoid being taken out shrinks the reported R-multiple of the eventual loss and flatters the record. If you move stops, R is measuring your discipline as much as your edge — arguably useful, but not what most people think they are recording.

It is also silent about frequency and duration. A +2R trade held for three months and a +2R trade held for twenty minutes score identically, despite completely different returns on capital and time. R measures the quality of individual trades, not the productivity of a strategy.

Scaled entries and partial exits complicate the arithmetic further, since there is no single entry price or single risk figure. Pick a convention — most traders use the initial risk of the full intended position — and apply it consistently, because switching conventions mid-record makes the average meaningless.

Terms on this page

1R

The initial risk on a trade — the distance from entry to the original stop, times size.

R-multiple

Realised result expressed in units of 1R. +2R means twice the amount risked.

Average R

Mean R-multiple across a set of trades. Sustained values of +0.2R to +0.5R are strong.

Stop migration

Moving the stop after entry. Breaks the R denominator and inflates the recorded score.