R multiple: how to measure trades in R

Money results are hard to compare. A 300 winner sounds good until you see it risked 600. R takes position size out of the picture. Every trade gets measured against what it put on the line, so a 0.10 lot trade and a 2.00 lot trade sit on the same scale. Once your trades are in R you can add them up and average them. Then you can ask the question that actually matters about a setup: what does it return for each unit of risk?

The formula

R multiple = result of the trade / initial risk

• Initial risk is what you lose if the stop is hit: stop distance × lot × value of that distance for 1 lot. It's fixed the moment you open the trade.
• Result is what the trade made or lost when it closed.

Moving the stop later doesn't change the initial risk. If you trail the stop to break-even, the trade still risked what it risked at entry. That's the number you divide by.

Example: one EURUSD trade

• Account 10,000. Risk 1%, so 1R = 100.
• Entry 1.08500, stop 1.08300. That's 20 pips. At 0.50 lot, 20 pips is worth 100.
• Target 1.09100, 60 pips away. Planned R: 60 / 20 = 3R.
• You close at 1.08900. That's +40 pips, or 200.
• Result: 200 / 100 = +2R.

If the stop gets hit, it's -1R. If you get nervous and close at +10 pips for 50, it's +0.5R.

Write the planned R next to the realised R. Here it's 3R planned and 2R taken. One trade like that means nothing. Twenty of them in a row say something about how you manage winners.

Count the costs

Commission and swap belong in the result. Say you pay 7 per lot round turn. On 0.50 lot that's 3.5.

• The winner above becomes 196.5. That's +1.97R, not +2R.
• A full stop becomes -103.5. That's -1.04R, not -1R.

Per trade it looks like rounding. Over a few hundred trades it isn't. If your journal shows R before costs, it shows you a slightly better trader than the one who pays the bills.

Why R tells you more than money

Two trades:

• Trade A risked 50 and made 100. That's +2R.
• Trade B risked 200 and lost 200. That's -1R.

In money you're down 100. In R you're up 1R. Both numbers are true. They just answer different questions. The money says your sizing was off: you put the biggest risk on the trade that lost. The R says the decisions themselves held up. Look only at money and you'd blame the setup. Look at R and you see the problem was size.

That's also why R works across months. If you risk 1% every time, a +5R month means the same thing on a 5,000 account as on a 50,000 one.

From single trades to expectancy

Here are ten trades in R: +2, -1, -1, +1.5, -1, +3, -0.5, -1, +2, -1.

• Total: +3R. Average: +0.3R per trade. That average is your expectancy in R.
• 4 winners averaging +2.13R. 6 losers averaging -0.92R.
• The same thing as a formula: (share of winners × average win) - (share of losers × average loss). Here 0.4 × 2.13 - 0.6 × 0.92 = 0.30.

Six losers out of ten and the series is still up 3R. That's why hit rate alone tells you so little. With an average win of 2R against an average loss of 1R, you break even at one winner in three.

Add the trades up one by one and you get an equity curve in R: 2, 1, 0, 1.5, 0.5, 3.5, 3, 2, 4, 3. The deepest dip is 2R, from +2 down to 0. Knowing your usual dip in R makes a bad week easier to read. Is it normal for your trading or is it something new?

Ten trades are far too few to trust, though. Treat them as an example of the arithmetic. Before you decide anything about a setup, give it a few dozen trades.

Mistakes that break R

Measuring from the moved stop. Your stop at break-even doesn't make the trade a 0R risk. Use the stop you entered with.

No stop at all. Without a stop there's no 1R. If you trade that way, write down the amount you decided to risk before you enter. Use that as 1R.

Leaving out costs. See above. Net result over initial risk, every time.

Changing what 1R means. If you sometimes risk 0.5% and sometimes 1%, R still compares the trades fairly. That's the point of it. But record the risk for each trade. Don't assume it.

Common questions

Tomky, Dojiwave · Updated 14 November 2026