Exit efficiency is the gain you actually banked divided by the gain available at the best moment. It sums up in one percentage everything MFE tells trade by trade: what share of the move you caught leaves without you?
What the ratio compares
Contents
MFE says trade by trade what the market offered. Exit efficiency aggregates that into a single percentage, which makes it comparable over time and trackable like an indicator. It is the form in which this family of measures becomes usable day to day.
The calculation adds up gains actually banked on one side, best moments available on the other, and takes the ratio. An efficiency of 44% means that out of everything the market offered, you kept a little under half.
The essential point is that this measure judges the exit only. It says nothing about the quality of your entries, which is precisely its interest: it isolates one decision and one alone, and that is what allows fixing it without questioning everything.
Exit efficiency = Σ gains banked ÷ Σ positive MFEs × 100
The calculation uses sums, not the average of the ratios. A large trade therefore weighs more, which is intended: that is where the money is.
Only positive MFEs enter the denominator. A trade that never went your way offered nothing, and including it would artificially inflate the result.
Efficiency cannot exceed 100%. If your tool shows more, MFE is being computed on candles too wide to capture the real peak.
| Exit efficiency | What it describes |
|---|---|
| over 85% | Very close targets. You exit near the peak because you do not aim far. |
| 60 to 85% | Good capture. Little room left on this lever alone. |
| 40 to 60% | The most frequent zone. Part of the move leaves without you, regularly. |
| under 40% | Clearly early exits. This is the most profitable lever to work on. |
| over 100% | Impossible. MFE is computed on candles too wide, the figure is wrong. |
The first row is the one nobody expects: a very high efficiency is a signal, not a compliment. Exiting at 90% of the best moment means that best moment was just ahead of your target, so your target was close. An efficiency of 90% with tiny gains describes a trader who leaves nothing on the table because they take nothing.
So the figure is never interpreted without the absolute amount alongside. 44% of $25,000 and 90% of $2,000 come from the same number of trades, and the first trader earned five times more. The percentage points at a lever, it does not rank traders.
You capture 44% of what the market offered. The figure is low without being abnormal, and above all it is actionable: it points at the exit, not the entry. The same quarter with identical entries and a further target would have an entirely different result, without a single extra trade taken.
This is the main benefit of the percentage format: it tracks from quarter to quarter where an amount in currency moves with capital and trade count. An efficiency going from 44 to 58% says an exit change produced an effect, independently of everything else.
It is also the only figure in this family you can look at without opening a particular trade. The others require going into detail, this one reads like a dashboard indicator.
Fixed target versus discretionary exit, trailing stop versus numeric objective: those two methods compare very badly in currency and very well in exit efficiency, provided they are tagged separately.
The test needs thirty or so trades per method. It is long, and it is the only way to settle a question usually debated endlessly without ever being measured.
The first misreading is aiming at 100%. A perfect efficiency would describe a trader exiting systematically at the exact peak, which is not a skill but an impossibility, or else the sign that the target is so close price has no time to go further. The reasonable objective is between 60 and 80%, not at the maximum.
The second is reading the percentage without the amount. An efficiency rising while total gain falls describes a trader who simply pulled their targets in: the ratio improves and the account deteriorates. The two figures are never read separately.
The third comes from computing on sums. One huge trade with a very high MFE can crush a whole quarter's efficiency, while forty well-exited trades change nothing. That is not a flaw in the calculation, but you need to know it before concluding you exit badly everywhere.
The classic mistake. Trying to improve this percentage for its own sake. The fastest way to raise it is to pull your targets in, which improves it mechanically while reducing gains. A trader at 90% efficiency and $2,000 of gains has a better ratio and a worse quarter than one at 44% and $11,000.
| Indicator | Formula | What it measures | When to use it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Exit efficiency | Σ gains ÷ Σ positive MFEs | The share of the move captured, in % | Tracking an exit lever over time |
| Money left on the table | Σ (MFE − gain), never negative | The same thing, in currency | Knowing whether the stake is worth the work |
| MFE | best point − entry | What was offered, trade by trade | Looking at a particular trade |
| MFE in R | MFE ÷ risk taken | What was offered, in risk units | Comparing across styles and markets |
An efficiency rising while total gain falls describes somebody who pulled their targets in. The two figures side by side make that case immediately visible, and it is far more frequent than imagined.
Between 60 and 80% is a good objective. Beyond, you are not capturing better, you are aiming less far, and the account feels it even if the ratio flatters.
Fixed target versus trailing stop, time-based exit versus signal exit: those methods compare cleanly in efficiency and very badly in currency. Thirty trades per tag settle a question usually debated endlessly.
It is the gain you actually banked divided by the gain available at your trades' best moment, as a percentage. An efficiency of 44% means you keep a little under half of what the market offered.
Between 60 and 80% is a good objective. Above 85%, the figure almost always describes targets that are too close: you exit near the peak because you do not aim far, and the account feels it even if the ratio flatters.
No, and a tool showing it has a data problem. Exiting exactly at the peak of every trade is not a skill but an impossibility. Above 100%, MFE is being computed on candles too wide to capture the real peak.
By moving the target further, or by letting it run with a trailing stop. Careful: both reduce the win rate, so the net effect has to be measured over thirty trades before being adopted. The percentage alone does not say whether the change pays.
Because it isolates the exit. A low average gain can come from mediocre entries or from early exits, and it does not let you tell which. Exit efficiency judges only the second, so it points at a precise correction instead of a general unease.
Exit efficiency is a metric in the Reports screen, computed from the excursions Tradoshi recomputes itself. It is only available for trades whose historical candles could be downloaded, and the count of covered trades reads in the same table.
The check described above takes one line: display Exit efficiency and Money left on the table together. The percentage says whether there is a lever, the amount says whether it is worth pulling. Crossed with the Tag dimension, they compare two ways of exiting on your own trades.
To go deeper on this: read the full guide. Every term is gathered in the glossary.