Everyone wants a higher win rate. So we bought one, at every price the market offered, and recorded what it cost. Same strategy, same stops — only the profit target changes:
| Take profit at | Win rate | Total profit |
|---|---|---|
| 0.5× risk | 66% | $4,543 |
| 1× risk | 55% | $14,096 |
| 1.5× risk | 52% | $14,557 |
| 2× risk | 51% | $12,910 |
| 3× risk / ride to close | 51% | $14,803 |
The 66%-win version makes less than a third of the money. Every extra point of win rate is purchased by selling a winner early: you keep all the same losers and convert the +2R and +3R days into +0.5R days. The equity curve gets smoother wins and the same rough losses.
The honest structure of our table: everything from 1× to 3× is statistically indistinguishable (we ran the formal test; the differences are sampling noise), and below 1× is a cliff. So the target barely matters — which itself is informative: this strategy's engine is holding to the close, and the target is decoration.
One real use for the win-rate dial: psychology. If you genuinely cannot sit through a 51%-win system's losing streaks — and at 4 trades/week, losing 5 of 7 happens regularly by pure chance — running 1× costs approximately nothing and wins 55%. Just know you're buying comfort, not edge, and decide before you start, not mid-drawdown.