State of
Trading 2026
What 4,200+ traders, 4 million trades, and 12 months of anonymised platform data reveal about how traders actually perform — and where they lose money.
The numbers at a glance
When the edge lives — and when it doesn't
Aggregate win rate and average P&L per 30-min window across 4,219 traders. The pattern is remarkably consistent.
The 6 most expensive habits in trading
Average weekly dollar cost per trader who exhibits each behaviour. Sample: traders with 50+ annotated trades.
Average dollar cost assumes $25k account size. Rates will vary by account size and instrument.
Grade A trades are 2.7× more profitable than Grade D
Trades auto-scored against their playbooks, across all 4,219 accounts. Expectancy by compliance grade.
Key finding: Traders who score below 60% playbook compliance for 4+ weeks in a row show an average account drawdown of 14.2% — 2.3× the platform average. Enforcing rules is a risk management tool, not a nicety.
Which setups actually have edge
Expectancy and win rate by tagged setup, minimum 500 occurrences. All account sizes, all instruments.
The psychology of real trading
Behavioural patterns extracted from trade logs, mood annotations, and session data.
Average trader experiences 2.3 tilt episodes per trading week, defined as 3+ losses in under 30 minutes.
74% of traders hold losers 2.4× longer than winners — the classic disposition effect, measured from actual position holds.
The average trader follows their playbook rules 61% of the time. A-grade traders: 91%. C-grade traders: 38%.
Only 34% of traders conduct a structured weekly review. Those who do show 44% higher 6-month consistency scores.
Most traders use the same strategy in all 6 regimes
Performance breaks down dramatically when strategy doesn't match regime. Here's what the data shows.
The top reasons funded traders bust their challenges
Analysed across FTMO, TopStep, Apex, and 12 other challenge providers. n = 847 challenge attempts.
TradeVision users who set up FTMO/TopStep/Apex risk templates before starting their challenge passed at a 43% higher rate than the industry average.
How this data was collected
All data is anonymised and aggregated. No individual trader's data is identifiable. The dataset covers January 2025 – December 2025, drawn from 4,219 active TradeVision accounts with a minimum of 50 logged trades during the period.
Accounts with 50+ logged trades, at least one playbook defined, and an active session for 80%+ of the period.
Accounts flagged as test/demo, accounts with average trade size < $500 notional, and accounts with <3 months active.
Median used for financial figures to reduce outlier impact. 95% confidence intervals reported where sample sizes vary. Regime classification via proprietary HMM model.
This report reflects a single-year snapshot. Data is not updated retroactively. A new edition is published each January.
See your own numbers — not the averages.
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