Home Stop Loss and Take Profit Optimizer

Stop Loss and Take Profit Optimizer

This Excel calculator is a basic demo for the optimum placement of stop losses and take profits to achieve a given trade win ratio.

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The sheet can work either as a trade checker or an advisor. There two modes are:

To calculate take profit/stop loss level for a given win ratio (compute SL/TP)
To analyze take profit/stop losses that you input to calculate the expected win ratio (analyze SL/TP)

Choose the option from the first selector in the spreadsheet.

Stop loss/take profit optimizer © forexop

Adding data

Before using the result, make sure you upload a recent data sample for the currency pair you are trading. You can do this from the MetaTrader history center.

Figure 1: Selecting the history center - MetaTrader © forexop

Export the data for your currency pair to a CSV file. Then open the file, copy all of the data cells and paste them into the “Input” tab in the worksheet. The date label and the number of data points should update once you enter your data sample.

Important: Make sure to set the timeframe to match the your data, otherwise the calculations will be inaccurate.

Figure 2: History center window © forexop

For the most accurate results, the projected trade time in the spreadsheet, should lie between 100 and 1000 intervals. For this reason, it is best to use sample data smaller than your normal trading timeframe. For example, if you plan to trade the hourly chart, its best to use a 5-minute data (M5) sample. If you are trading the one-day (D1) chart, you can use 30-minute (M30) sample data.

Figure 3: Spreadsheet input tab for entering sample data © forexop

Input Values

For the sheet to calculate, you will need to enter the following values:

Current price – the current market price of the currency pair
Spread – enter the spread your broker is applying. If you don’t know this, leave the default of 4 pips.
Market behavior – Trending, Flat, Turning
Trade time (how long do you want the trade to stay open)
Trading direction – buy/sell
Target win ratio

Market Behavior

If you have a particular view on the market, you can enter it here. There are three options:

Trending – you expect the current trend to continue, in the same direction and with the same strength.
Anti-trending – You expect the current trend to reverse. For example, if the market is trending strongly upwards, use this value if you expect the market to turn and reverse with a similar counter-trend.
Random walk – with a random walk, you expect the market to be directionless or flat.

Trade Time

Enter a target trade time. The more profit you want to capture, the longer your time frame will need to be. As mentioned above, for best results, choose a setting between 100 and 1000 intervals of your data sample. So for example, if you want to enter a day trade, you could use 288 x 5 minutes.

Trade Direction

Set you trade direction as either a buy or a sell

Target Win Ratio

Enter the win ratio that you want to achieve. The win ratio is the ratio of the number of winning trades to the number of trades entered.

Generally, for a higher win ratio you will need to accept a lower profit on each trade.

Results

The result cells will show you the results of the calculation and where to place your trade exit points.

If a cell shows as red, this indicates a problem with your trade setup. This can be due to a high loss rate, a low win ratio, or a low reward to risk ratio. Change your values accordingly to find a better trade entry and exit.