Trading Outpost

The 3:1 Setup Is Not What Most Traders Really Think

Every figure this video puts on screen, and where it comes from.

The video makes two kinds of numerical claim and they are sourced differently.

Arithmetic is derived rather than cited. A break even win rate, an expectancy and a hundred trade total are all consequences of the definitions the video states out loud, so the honest source is the derivation, and it is written out below. A citation to somebody else repeating the same sum would be weaker, not stronger.

Everything else on screen is invented, and is labelled as such in the frame. No price series in this video is real, no account curve is real, and no order book is real. They are there to show a mechanism, and each carries a Source: line saying so. Nothing in this video asserts that a particular thing happened in a particular market, and there is no claim anywhere about how often any real strategy wins.


The ratio, and what breaks even

A 3:1 setup breaks even at 25 percent before costs.

If a winning trade returns R times the amount risked and a loser costs one unit, then over n trades at a win rate w the account changes by

n * ( w * R  -  (1 - w) * 1 )

which is zero when w * R = 1 - w, that is when

w = 1 / (1 + R)

Evaluated at the three payoffs the video names:

Payoff Break even win rate
1 to 1 50 percent
2 to 1 33.3 percent
3 to 1 25 percent

Those are the three figures on the payoff stacks and the marked point on the break even curve. The curve on screen is 1 / (1 + R) plotted directly.

The money version. Risking 100 to make 300 across 100 trades at the break even rate:

25 wins   x 300 = 7,500
75 losses x 100 = 7,500

Flat before costs, which is what the two bars of equal length in that shot are showing. After costs it is negative, because every trade pays a spread and a commission and those are subtracted from both sides.

The 20 percent case. The same 3:1 targets at a 20 percent win rate:

20 wins   x 3R = 60R
80 losses x 1R = 80R

A loss of 20R over 100 trades, before costs. That is the account line in the intro and in chapter two, and its end value is computed from the run of outcomes the shot draws rather than typed in.

Expectancy. What one average trade produces, in R:

E = w * R - (1 - w)

At 3:1 and a 25 percent win rate, E = 0. At 35 percent, E = 0.35 * 3 - 0.65 = 0.40R per trade. At 20 percent the same sum is 0.20 * 3 - 0.80, a fifth of an R lost per trade. Those are the figures on the expectancy readout and the two dials.

The worked example. Entry 100, stop 98, target 106. Risk is 2 points, reward is 6 points, so the ratio is 3 to 1. Risking 100 dollars with a 10 point stop puts the target 30 points away for the same reason.

How often a target that far away is reached

The falling curve in chapter two is not an invented decay. It is the classic gambler’s ruin result for a fair game: starting from stake z, with ruin at 0 and a target at M, the probability of reaching M before 0 is z / M.

Grinstead and Snell, Introductory Probability, section 12.2, Gambler’s Ruin. https://stats.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Probability_Theory/Introductory_Probability_(Grinstead_and_Snell)/12:_Random_Walks/12.02:_Gambler’s_Ruin

A trade with its stop 1R below the entry and its target R above is that game with z = 1 and M = 1 + R, so with no edge and no costs the chance of the target landing first is

1 / (1 + R)

At 3:1 that is 25 percent, which is exactly the break even win rate above. The two are the same expression, and that is the point: a 3:1 setup with no edge behind it wins precisely often enough to finish flat, and then loses to costs. It is why the video argues that the ratio judges a trade idea rather than replacing one.

This is also what the video means by a target three times further away being harder to hit. Under the same model a target 0.6R away is reached first 62.5 percent of the time, and a target 4R away 20 percent of the time.

The planned and realised figures

The 1.7R average winner and the 1.1R average loser are the figures the script states, and the journal shots are built from them: a single seeded run of outcomes at a fixed win rate, with each outcome rendered at the planned pair and again at the realised pair. The tape, the two average rules and the gap measured between them all come from that one run.

These illustrate a gap rather than measure one. No trader’s log was examined and no population of trades was sampled. The shots carry Source: simulated, one run of outcomes at the stated averages.

What is on screen and is invented

All of the following are drawn to show a mechanism and are labelled in frame:

Marks

Two real marks appear. The charting platform’s own mark is shown on the two beats about a drawing tool and about a screenshot, because that is what those lines are describing. A row of market marks appears once, under the claim that the same three chart shapes turn up whatever is being traded. Both are the published geometry from the simple-icons project. No mark is drawn against invented price data, and no instrument is named on any chart in this video.

Not checked