Results
These are the results of my own trading account.
Returns are percentages, not dollars. I don't publish account size. Every month is adjusted for money I deposited or withdrew, so what you see is what my trading did, not what my bank transfers did.
Every month gets posted whether it was good or not. September was a particularly difficult month, but losses and bad periods are part of this game and I'm sharing regardless.
Since 1 May 2025
| Cumulative return | +30.1% |
| 2025 (May to Dec) | +5.6% |
| 2026 (Jan to Sep) | +23.2% |
| Worst drawdown (Feb 2026) | −27.2% |
| Months tracked | 17 |
Month by month
| Month | Return | Trades | Win % | Avg win / avg loss | Profit factor |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 2025 | −4.57% | 11 | 63.6% | 0.80 | 1.39 |
| Jun 2025 | +3.20% | 13 | 60.0% | 1.15 | 1.72 |
| Jul 2025 | +5.08% | 22 | 45.0% | 2.74 | 2.24 |
| Aug 2025 | −0.74% | 22 | 71.4% | 2.41 | 6.01 |
| Sep 2025 | +2.34% | 16 | 86.7% | 2.91 | 18.88 |
| Oct 2025 | +11.95% | 32 | 50.0% | 1.91 | 1.91 |
| Nov 2025 | −7.46% | 24 | 26.1% | 1.37 | 0.48 |
| Dec 2025 | −3.08% | 30 | 27.6% | 2.08 | 0.79 |
| Jan 2026 | −2.22% | 28 | 21.4% | 2.70 | 0.74 |
| Feb 2026 | −17.05% | 28 | 15.4% | 6.88 | 1.25 |
| Mar 2026 | +22.12% | 33 | 28.1% | 10.16 | 3.97 |
| Apr 2026 | +8.17% | 23 | 31.8% | 9.57 | 4.47 |
| May 2026 | +12.54% | 39 | 33.3% | 8.38 | 4.19 |
| Jun 2026 | +12.97% | 54 | 26.5% | 6.22 | 2.25 |
| Jul 2026 | −2.63% | 24 | 20.8% | 4.73 | 1.24 |
| Aug 2026 | +1.45% | 46 | 23.8% | 3.38 | 1.06 |
| Sep 2026 | −8.41% | 33 | 6.1% | 0.15 | 0.01 |
Behind the numbers
September 2026: two winners out of thirty-three. Down 8.41%, my second-worst month on record, and the lowest win rate I have ever published. Halfway through, I was nineteen trades in without a single winner, and I wrote about it while it was happening in Zero for Nineteen. The month finished the way it started. Setups qualified, worked for two or three days, then turned and stopped me out.
Thirty-one trades that didn't work cost the account 8.4%. That's the part I want you to see. Every loss was small because the risk on every entry was small, and decided before I bought. The same thirty-three trades taken with big, confident positions would not have produced a bad month. They would have produced a last month.
Being right is not the job, but the winners have to show up. In September 2025 I won 87% of my trades and the account moved 2.3%. In March 2026 I won 28% and it moved 22%. Somewhere in between, I stopped trying to be right and started making the rare right one count. September 2026 is the other side of that bargain. A strategy that wins one time in four needs its winners to carry everything, and this month the average winner was a fraction of the average loser. When the market won't let a move run, nothing carries it.
February 2026 is still the worst month. Down 17.05%. The lesson in it was position sizing: too much money on the trades that failed. The very next month was my best, up 22.12%.
The drawdown is real. Compound every month's return in the table above and you get a running record of my results. That record peaked at the end of October 2025. Four losing months followed, and by the end of February 2026 it sat 27.2% below that peak. It took three months to climb back, with a new high in May 2026. After September, I'm 9.5% below my June high. If numbers like those would end you, this style of trading isn't for you, and I'd rather say so here than have you find out with your own money.
Method
What's included. All my trading accounts, combined into one record: my active swing trading account and my long-term retirement account. Since January 2026, all of them have been at Interactive Brokers.
Returns. Closed trades only. Each month's return is the profit or loss I realized that month, after commissions, divided by the account's starting balance on the same closed-trade basis. It's adjusted for deposits and withdrawals by the date each one happened, then compounded month to month. Open positions don't count until they're closed. Profit or loss from a partial exit counts toward the return in the month I take it, even if the rest of the position is still open.
Drawdown. The largest fall from a high to the low that followed it, measured on the same closed-trade record as the monthly returns and checked at month-end. You can work it out yourself from the table.
Trade statistics. A trade is one position from first entry to full exit, partial exits included, counted in the month it closes. Win % is the share of trades that closed at a profit. Avg win / avg loss compares the average winning trade with the average losing one. Profit factor is the total from winning trades divided by the total from losing trades, so above 1 means the winners paid for the losers.
Sources. From September 2026, every figure comes directly from my broker statements. Before that, figures came from my TradeZella journal, which counted partial exits slightly differently. When I switched, I checked every month from February to August against the statements. All of them matched except June, which is corrected above.
What's not shown. April 2025. I was funding the account through that month and don't have a clean starting balance to measure against, so any figure I gave you would be invented. The record starts with the first month I can calculate honestly.
Changes. In September 2026, figures moved to my broker statements and June 2026 was corrected. If the method changes again, I'll say so in the month it changes rather than quietly restating the past.
Nothing on this page is investment advice, and past results don't predict future results. See the full disclaimer.