Our worst losing streak: 14 trades in a row

Ask any signal service to show you their worst losing streak. Most will change the subject. We will not, so here is ours: 14 losing trades in a row.

That number is not a confession. It is the point. A system that loses 54.5% of its trades is going to string losses together, and it is going to do it more than once. If a seller cannot tell you their worst streak, they either do not know it or do not want you to.

Whose trades are these

These are the STS Research NQ (E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures) signals, the same five-strategy book we trade live and publish. The record covers June 2011 to June 2026, 3,505 backtested trades on NQ. Every figure below comes from that record. When we say "worst," we mean the worst that appears in the hypothetical history, not a rounded or cherry-picked slice.

A winning system that loses most of its trades

The book's headline hypothetical result is net $1,120,402 over 3,505 trades. The win rate is 45.5%, which means it lost 54.5% of the time. Read that twice, because it is the part most people get wrong about systematic trading.

The edge is not how often it wins. The edge is two things working together. First, the payoff ratio is 1.88: the average winning trade was $1,937 while the average losing trade was $1,033. Wins were bigger than losses. Second, the five sub-strategies have low correlation to each other, so a bad run in one does not usually line up with a bad run in the others. Profit factor came out to 1.57 and expectancy to $320 per trade, with a t-stat of 4.9 across 3,505 trades.

When the win rate is below half, losing streaks are not a malfunction. They are arithmetic. Flip a coin weighted to tails 54.5% of the time and you will see long runs of tails. The 14-trade streak is what that looks like in practice.

The ugly numbers, in one place

Here is the full downside of the hypothetical record, stated plainly.

None of that is comfortable to publish. All of it is real to the record, and all of it is the sort of thing you should see before you pay anyone for signals.

Trade-by-trade win and loss sequence for the STS NQ book, green up for a win and red down for a loss, with a contiguous run of 14 losses in a row highlighted. Below it, the ugly numbers: worst streak 14 trades, largest loss $10,317, max drawdown $28,994 or 17.5%, win rate 45.5%. Trade-by-trade win and loss sequence for the STS NQ book, green up for a win and red down for a loss, with a contiguous run of 14 losses in a row highlighted. Below it, the ugly numbers: worst streak 14 trades, largest loss $10,317, max drawdown $28,994 or 17.5%, win rate 45.5%.
A 45.5% win-rate system strings losses together by design. Our worst backtested run was 14 in a row. The edge is the payoff ratio, not the hit rate.

The backtest streak is not the worst you should plan for

This is where honesty gets uncomfortable for us, not just for the industry.

The 14-trade streak and the $28,994 drawdown are what happened in one particular order of trades: the order history handed us. But the order of wins and losses is close to random. Reshuffle the same 3,505 real trades into a different sequence and you get a different worst drawdown, sometimes much deeper.

We ran that test. In 10,000 reshuffles of the actual trades (a Monte Carlo simulation), the $28,994 drawdown we lived through sits at only the 2nd percentile. In plain terms, the real path was one of the calmer ones. The median forward maximum drawdown across those reshuffles was about $42,021, and 1 in 20 paths exceeded roughly $62,078.

So do not treat $28,994 as the ceiling. Do not treat the $42,021 median as a ceiling either, because deeper paths exist and a 1-in-20 outcome ran past $62,078. The lesson is simple: plan for a drawdown worse than the one in the track record, because the track record only shows one draw from the deck.

Monte Carlo drawdown band from 10,000 reshuffles of the 3,505 real trades. The realized $28,994 drawdown sits at the 2nd percentile near the calm left edge. The median forward maximum drawdown is about $42,021, and the 95th percentile is about $62,078, with paths extending deeper to the right. Monte Carlo drawdown band from 10,000 reshuffles of the 3,505 real trades. The realized $28,994 drawdown sits at the 2nd percentile near the calm left edge. The median forward maximum drawdown is about $42,021, and the 95th percentile is about $62,078, with paths extending deeper to the right.
Reshuffling the same real trades shows the realized $28,994 drawdown was a mild draw (2nd percentile). Median forward drawdown was about $42,021, and 1 in 20 reshuffles ran past about $62,078. Hypothetical, backtested results.

If those dollar figures are larger than your account can absorb, that is useful information, not a reason to look away. The same book on Micro NQ (MNQ) contracts is one tenth the dollars, so the reshuffled drawdowns scale down with it, with the realized figure near $2,899. Sizing is how you match a system's real range to your account. For more on that, see how long STS drawdowns tend to last and why you should expect a worse drawdown than the backtest, and work through the NQ account-size reality check before funding anything.

What to demand from any signal seller

You do not need to trust us on this. Use the same questions on every service you look at, including this one.

  1. Show me your worst losing streak, in number of trades. If they cannot say it fast, they do not track their own downside.
  2. Show me the maximum drawdown in dollars, not just a percentage. Percentages hide the account pain.
  3. Tell me the win rate, and do not be impressed by a high one on its own. A 90% win rate with tiny wins and rare huge losses is a worse deal than a 45.5% rate with a 1.88 payoff ratio.
  4. Is the record a live TradingView script and a full trade list, or is it screenshots? Screenshots are marketing. A trade-by-trade record is evidence.
  5. Ask whether the figures are hypothetical or live, and read the disclaimers.

If you want to run those checks on us, the full record is on the tear sheet, and our track-record audit guide walks through how to pull a seller's numbers apart.

A limitation we will state out loud

The 3,505-trade record is a backtest of the current five-strategy book across historical NQ data. It reflects rules applied to prices that already happened. Live execution adds slippage, fills, and the human factor of actually clicking when the system says to during a 14-trade skid. The Monte Carlo work above is our attempt to widen the range you plan for, but it reshuffles past trades and cannot manufacture market conditions that never occurred in the sample.

Conflict disclosure

We trade this book live and we sell access to the signals. Those interests point the same way most of the time and not always, so we publish the losing streak, the worst loss, and the deeper-than-realized drawdown estimates precisely so the ugly parts are on the table before you decide.

If radical transparency is the standard you want from a signal service, start with the free 7-day trial on the pricing page, no card required, and check our numbers against the checklist above.

Hypothetical Performance Disclaimer (CFTC Rule 4.41): These results are based on simulated or hypothetical performance results that have certain inherent limitations. Unlike the results shown in an actual performance record, these results do not represent actual trading. Also, because these trades have not actually been executed, these results may have under- or over-compensated for the impact, if any, of certain market factors, such as lack of liquidity. Simulated or hypothetical trading programs in general are also subject to the fact that they are designed with the benefit of hindsight. No representation is being made that any account will or is likely to achieve profits or losses similar to these being shown.

Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. Futures trading involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for all investors.