Understanding the Dashboard

The Dashboard is your command center. Each strategy displays 4 essential metrics:

Win Rate — The percentage of winning trades. Beware the trap: a 25% Win Rate can go with a positive result. Illustrative example: a strategy that only wins a quarter of its trades, but whose gains far exceed its losses, can end at +11%. Conversely, an 80% Win Rate strategy that loses big on each defeat can be catastrophic.

Sharpe Ratio — Proposed by William Sharpe in 1966 (Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, 1990), it's a reference ratio. It measures how much return you get per unit of risk. Common benchmarks: a Sharpe > 1.0 is seen as good, > 2.0 as excellent. On Strategy Arena, each strategy's Sharpe is displayed and changes with the market.

PnL (Profit & Loss) — Total gain or loss as a percentage. It's the bottom line, but beware: a big PnL with a low Sharpe can come from high risk or from luck.

Max Drawdown — The worst drop from a peak. If your strategy has a -15% Max Drawdown, you would have seen your capital drop 15% at some point. It's the survival metric: can you psychologically handle that drop?

On the Dashboard, 50+ strategies compete in real time. Sort by Sharpe for the most consistent, by PnL for the best performers, by Drawdown for the safest.

How to Read a Leaderboard

Let's take an illustrative example: a strategy shows only 24% Win Rate, but +11% PnL. How is this possible? The answer is one word: asymmetry. In this example, each win is about 4x bigger than each loss. Imagine a poker player who often loses small bets but occasionally wins the jackpot — over time, they can end up ahead.

Conversely, a strategy with 80% Win Rate can be terrible if its few losses are gigantic. This is the classic trap for beginner traders: they prefer "being right often" over "making money".

Profit Factor Explained

The Profit Factor is a simple ratio: sum of gains / sum of losses. A Profit Factor of 1.0 means you win as much as you lose (break even). A Profit Factor of 1.5 means for every dollar lost, you gain $1.50. Key thresholds:

- < 1.0: Losing strategy — you lose more than you win
- 1.0 - 1.3: Mediocre — transaction fees will probably eat everything
- 1.3 - 2.0: Good — the strategy has a real edge
- > 2.0: Excellent — but check it's not overfitting

On the Dashboard, sort strategies by Profit Factor to immediately see which ones have a real edge. Combine this with the Sharpe Ratio for a complete picture: a Profit Factor of 1.8 with a Sharpe of 1.5 describes a consistent strategy over the measured period.