Longer than almost anyone expects. Our profitable strategy — profit factor 1.12 over 2.54 years — still suffered 11 consecutive losses. At a 25.4% win rate, runs of 8 to 12 losses are statistically routine, not a sign the strategy is broken.
Our liquidity sweep strategy finished 2.54 years with a profit factor of 1.12 and positive expectancy. Inside that profitable record sits a run of 11 consecutive losing trades.
That is worth sitting with. The strategy worked, and it still delivered eleven losses in a row. Anyone who abandoned it during that stretch would have converted a winning system into a realised loss.
At a 25.4% win rate roughly three of every four trades lose. The probability of a given trade losing is about 0.75, so four losses in a row happens around 32% of the time, eight in a row around 10%, and twelve in a row around 3%.
Over a few hundred trades, sequences that individually look improbable become near-certain to appear somewhere. A streak is not evidence that something has stopped working — it is the expected texture of a low-win-rate, high-reward strategy.
The higher your reward-to-risk, the lower your win rate, and the longer the streaks you must tolerate. Approximate worst streaks you should plan for across 200 trades:
| Win rate | Typical worst streak in 200 trades | Common at reward:risk |
|---|---|---|
| 50% | ~7-8 losses | 1:1 |
| 40% | ~9-10 losses | 1.5:1 |
| 33% | ~11-12 losses | 2:1 |
| 25% | ~15-17 losses | 3:1 |
| 20% | ~20+ losses | 4:1 |
The account damage from eleven losses at 1% risk is roughly 10-11% — unpleasant but survivable. The behavioural damage is usually far worse: traders widen stops, skip the next signal, or increase size to recover.
Skipping signals is especially destructive with wide-target strategies, because the profits are concentrated in a small number of large winners. Miss two of those while "waiting for confirmation" and the edge is gone even though the strategy still works.
Work backwards from the streak. If your strategy's realistic worst streak is fifteen, ask what fifteen consecutive losses would do at your risk per trade. At 1% that is roughly a 14% drawdown; at 3% it is closer to 37%, which requires a 59% gain to recover.
This is the practical argument for small fixed-percentage risk, and it is why our own testing found only the smallest risk setting stayed robust. The details are in risk, properly.
A normal streak looks like your usual losses arriving consecutively — same setups, same stop distances, same market conditions. A broken strategy usually shows something structurally different: setups firing in conditions they never used to, average loss growing, or the market regime visibly changing.
The honest test is sample size against your baseline. If your expectancy over the last 100 trades is far below your tested expectancy, that is worth investigating. Eleven bad trades is not. This is exactly why we log every trade — see trade review.
Write down, in advance, the streak length at which you will pause and review — and make it longer than your tested worst streak. Deciding mid-drawdown guarantees an emotional answer.
Our strategy's brain is literally told its own history: it carries the note that it has previously lost 11 in a row and that a losing streak is normal variance rather than a reason to widen risk. Traders need the same reminder more than algorithms do.
At a 25% win rate, 15-17 consecutive losses across 200 trades is statistically routine. Our own profitable strategy recorded 11.
Not by itself. Compare recent expectancy against your tested baseline over a meaningful sample rather than reacting to a streak.
Size so the worst plausible streak is tolerable — small fixed-percentage risk — and decide your review threshold before it happens, not during.
Because they win less often by design. A 3.5:1 target means a low win rate, and low win rates produce long runs of losses.