Home Glossary Gross profit and gross loss
Gross profit and gross loss
Gross profit and gross loss — The two totals underneath every ratio on the dashboard — winners summed on one side, losers on the other, before they are combined.
Almost every headline metric is built from these two numbers, and almost no dashboard shows them. Printing the components next to the ratio is the difference between a figure you can check and one you have to trust.
In plain English
Gross profit is the sum of every trade that finished positive. Gross loss is the sum of every trade that finished negative, and it is conventionally shown as a negative figure or as an absolute value — either is fine as long as the page says which. Together they produce net profit by addition and profit factor by division.
Both are net of costs, which sounds contradictory and is not. "Gross" here means before combining winners with losers, not before commission. A trade that made $3 and paid $5 in commission is a losing trade and belongs in gross loss. Any other treatment produces a profit factor that flatters every account with high trading costs, which is exactly the population it should be warning.
The pair is more informative than the ratio built from it. A profit factor of 1.6 could be 16,000 against 10,000 or 160 against 100. The first is a substantial period; the second is noise. The ratio cannot distinguish them and the components do it immediately.
The formula
Gross profit = Σ net result, over trades where net > 0 Gross loss = Σ net result, over trades where net < 0 Net profit = gross profit + gross loss Profit factor = gross profit ÷ |gross loss|
- Net result — after commission, swap, taxes and fees.
- Break-even trades belong in neither total, but they do stay in the trade count, which is why win rate and loss rate need not sum to 100%.
If gross loss is zero the profit factor is undefined rather than infinite. TapeSheet prints an em dash, because inventing a number there is how a five-trade sample ends up looking like a perfect system.
Worked example — the demo account
The bundled demo account: 96 closed trades, 49 winners and 47 losers.
| Gross profit | $11,692.91 | |
|---|---|---|
| Gross loss | −$7,399.46 | |
| Net profit | +$4,293.45 | |
| Profit factor | 1.58 | |
| Average win | $238.63 | gross profit ÷ 49 |
| Average loss | $157.44 | |gross loss| ÷ 47 |
Two totals about nine and six thousand in size, from 96 trades — a real sample rather than a handful of results.
The scale is the first thing the pair tells you. Just over $19,000 of gross activity produced +$4,293.45 of net profit, which is a useful ratio to notice on its own: the account turned over roughly four and a half dollars of gross result for every dollar it kept.
The second thing is the arithmetic path to everything else. Average win and average loss come straight out of these totals, the payoff ratio comes from those, and the break-even win rate comes from that. Four metrics, two inputs, and every step checkable.
Every figure above is from the demo account TapeSheet ships with — 96 closed trades, generated from a fixed seed. Open the same account →
What this does not tell you
The caveat is the part worth reading. Most tools put it in a footer, if they print it at all.
- Nothing about distribution. A gross profit of 11,693 could be 49 similar winners or one enormous one and 48 small ones. The totals hide the shape completely, which is what the distribution histogram is for.
- Nothing about order. Both totals are order-independent, so the sequence that produced a drawdown is invisible in them.
- Nothing about size per trade, so an account that varied its lot size wildly and one that never did produce identical totals.
- They are not comparable across periods of different length without dividing by trade count first — which turns them into averages, and averages are the comparable form.
Where TapeSheet shows it
Printed directly underneath the profit factor tile on the Overview, in smaller type, so the ratio can be verified against its own inputs without leaving the screen. Also the two bars in the win/loss summary.
Questions
Should gross profit be before or after commission?
After. "Gross" distinguishes winners-only from the combined total; it does not mean before costs. Computing it before commission inflates profit factor for anybody paying meaningful commission, and it also lets a trade that lost money after costs be counted as a winner, which corrupts win rate at the same time.
Why do my winners and losers not add up to my trade count?
Break-even trades. A trade whose net result is exactly zero — usually a scratch, occasionally a stop at entry — is neither a win nor a loss, and TapeSheet counts it separately. It stays in the denominator for win rate, which is why win rate and loss rate can sum to less than 100%.
What does a large gross loss mean?
On its own, nothing at all — a high-frequency strategy with a genuine edge produces enormous totals on both sides. What matters is the relationship between them and the number of trades that produced each. A large gross loss from many small losses is an ordinary cost of doing business; the same total from three trades is a different story entirely.
Related terms
See your own statement, analyzed
Drop an MT4 or MT5 statement on the page and the whole dashboard renders in about three seconds. No signup, no upload — the file is parsed inside your browser tab and never leaves your device.
Analyze my statementAll glossary terms ·Free trading journal ·MT4 statement analyzer ·MT5 report analyzer