The reward ratio sets your breakeven win rateYum! Brands, Inc.BATS:YUMRB_TMost traders check the same number first and it can't answer the question they're asking it. How often you're right tells you nothing about whether you make money, because it says nothing about how much a right one pays or a wrong one costs. Two people can both report 45% while one compounds and the other slowly goes broke. The arithmetic that does answer it takes ten seconds. Breakeven hit rate is one divided by one plus the reward ratio. At one-to-one you need better than 50% or you're going backwards. At two-to-one you need 33%. At the ratio marked on this chart, roughly 2.3 to 1, breakeven arrives at 30%. So a 44% hit rate is a slow bleed in the first case and a comfortable margin in the third, and the trader did not get better in between. Only the exit moved. How I actually check a chart, in order. First, is the long-term trend real and rising. If it isn't, nothing after this matters and I don't look. Second, is momentum confirming rather than exhausted. This is where most entries that "should have worked" fail — the level was right and the timing was three weeks early. Third, and this is the one this post is about: where does the stop go, and is there enough room between here and a structural target to make the trade worth taking at all. If the honest target is 1.2 times the stop distance, I need to be right more than 45% of the time forever, and I'm not going to be. So it doesn't get taken, regardless of how good the chart looks. That third check kills more of my setups than the first two combined, and it's the one almost nobody runs. The cost of the alternative. Ten entries, same stops, same targets. Four eventually reach the target, three trade into profit and then reverse into the stop, three go nowhere. Close every position the moment it shows a small gain and you finish at 70% and up 1.2R. Leave all ten alone and you finish at 40% and up 3.2R. Same ten trades. Thirty points of hit rate, bought for two thirds of the profit. The screenshot version looks better. The account doesn't. One test worth running on your own record. Take any metric you track and ask whether you could raise it on purpose by trading worse. Hit rate fails instantly — cut every winner early and it climbs this afternoon. Profit factor, average winner, drawdown, consistency: none of them will move for you. The most quoted number in retail trading is the only common one that rewards deliberate self-sabotage. That's not a coincidence, and it's roughly why it gets quoted. Watch the average result per trade instead, and watch what your worst losing run cost. Those two decide whether you're still here in a year. Educational post. Not advice, and no position is being recommended here.