Newcomers to the trading market often ask a question: "What is your win rate?"

But after doing this for a while, you'll realize—trading is never about who wins the most, but about who loses the slowest.

**How Deceptive the Win Rate Number Is**

Imagine this scenario: out of ten trades, you make seven profits, and a 70% win rate seems pretty good. But one bad trade wipes out all the profits from the previous seven and even leaves you in debt. In the end, your account still ends up in the red.

Where's the problem? It's so simple it can't be simpler—each time you lose, the amount lost far exceeds what you gain on each winning trade. A high win rate can't save this situation at all.

**Real experts focus not on right or wrong, but on whether losses are controllable**

Retail traders care about straightforward things: can they predict accurately, can they catch big trends.

Experienced traders care about something entirely different: whether losses are manageable when they happen, whether a single mistake can severely damage the account. In their logic, small stop-losses are a necessary cost of doing business. But big losses? That's not risk; that's a trading accident. They don't fear making wrong judgments; they fear being stubborn and refusing to cut losses when wrong.

**The difference in account longevity is determined by the distribution of losses**

Suppose two traders:

A's trading record: 5 profitable trades each +2%, 1 loss of -20%

B's trading record: 3 profitable trades each +3%, 3 losses each -2%

Who can survive longer? No need to think twice.

The key insight is this: accounts are usually not worn out by a series of small stop-losses, but destroyed by that one out-of-control big loss. Learning to keep yourself alive long enough is a thousand times more important than chasing perfect win rates.