Win/Loss Ratio (WLR) is the size of your average winning trade divided by the size of your average losing trade. Wins go up top, losses go bottom (in absolute value). A WLR of 2.0 means your typical winner is twice as big as your typical loser. WLR of 1.0 means they're the same size. WLR of 0.5 means you give back twice what you take.
WLR alone is half the story — Win Rate is the other half. Together they decide profitability. A 30% win rate at WLR 3.0 is profitable. A 60% win rate at WLR 0.5 is not. The two numbers are inseparable; reading one without the other is how traders convince themselves a losing system is working because "I win more often than not."
Read WLR + Win Rate together as a fingerprint: - High win rate (60%+) + low WLR (~0.7-1.0) — scalping fingerprint. Many small wins, occasional larger losses. Profitable only if win-rate stays above the breakeven threshold; one bad week of revenge-trading flips the math fast. - Low win rate (30-40%) + high WLR (3.0+) — swing/breakout fingerprint. Most trades stop out small, occasional runners pay for everything. Psychologically punishing — long losing streaks are normal; quitting during the streak is the failure mode. - The dangerous middle (~50% win rate, ~1.2 WLR) — feels OK at every individual trade, adds up to nothing over a hundred. The trader stays in this zone the longest because no single number screams. - WLR < (1 − win-rate) / win-rate — your strategy is mathematically losing money regardless of how it feels. The breakeven inequality is the line: if WLR is on the wrong side of it, the system has negative expectancy and no amount of "trying harder" will fix it.
TradeOnyx shows WLR as its own KPI tile in the Overview, directly next to Win Rate. The two are deliberately neighboring tiles — they're meant to be read together. The hint underneath shows the breakeven win-rate implied by the current WLR ("breakeven > 33% at WLR 2.0"), so the math is already on screen, no calculator needed.
The most useful filter in the Trades tab is per-playbook WLR: filter by playbook, watch the WLR + Win Rate update in the Overview. A playbook with WLR 2.0 and Win Rate 45% is paying its way; a playbook with WLR 1.1 and Win Rate 52% looks fine on the surface but barely beats breakeven (1 / (1 + 1.1) = 47.6% breakeven). Cut the second one or change its rules; the first one earns its room in the rotation.
The pairing with the Expectancy article is direct: Expectancy = (Win Rate × Avg Win) − (Loss Rate × Avg Loss). Win Rate and WLR are the inputs that produce Expectancy. If Expectancy is the verdict, WLR + Win Rate are the evidence.