Strategy Selection Guide
With 480+ strategies available, how do you pick the right ones? This guide explains every metric and helps you build a selection framework that matches your goals.
The Six Metrics That Matter
The percentage of closed trades that hit take-profit. Higher is better, but not in isolation. A strategy with 45% win rate can still be highly profitable if its average win is much larger than its average loss.
Do not chase win rate alone. A 90% win rate strategy that loses 10x on the rare losing trade has terrible risk-adjusted returns.
Gross profit divided by gross loss. A profit factor of 1.5 means for every $1 lost, the strategy made $1.50. This is the single most important ratio for evaluating a strategy's quality.
Profit factor below 1.0 means the strategy lost money in total. Even a 70% win rate can have a profit factor below 1.0 if losses dwarf wins.
The largest peak-to-trough decline in the strategy's equity curve. This tells you the worst losing streak you would have experienced following this strategy historically.
A strategy with high profit factor but high drawdown may be psychologically difficult to follow — most traders abandon strategies during drawdown, exactly when they should be holding on.
The statistical sample size of the backtest. More trades means more reliable statistics. A strategy with 10 trades and 90% win rate is statistically meaningless — that sample is too small to trust.
Our platform enforces a minimum of 20 trades for any published strategy. But we recommend favouring strategies with 100+ trades for greater statistical confidence.
Strategies are classified as Low, Medium, or High risk. This reflects the volatility of the equity curve and the typical stop-loss size relative to take-profit.
High-risk strategies can produce higher returns but also larger swings. If you are new to trading signals, start with Low or Medium risk strategies until you understand how the system works.
How many signals a strategy generates per day or week. High-frequency (scalping) strategies may fire 5–20 signals per day. Position strategies may fire once a week.
More signals is not inherently better. Higher frequency often means smaller profit per signal and requires more active monitoring. Match this to your available time.
A Practical Selection Framework
Use these filters in order. Eliminating poor candidates early makes the final decision easier.
Diversification: Following Multiple Strategies
Following multiple uncorrelated strategies is the most effective way to reduce variance in your signal performance. If one strategy hits a losing streak, others may be performing well.
- · Mix XAUUSD, EURUSD, GBPUSD
- · Mix scalping + swing strategies
- · Mix different risk levels
- · Max 5–8 strategies for beginners
- · 10 strategies all on EURUSD
- · All same timeframe (all scalping)
- · All high risk
- · Following 30+ strategies at once