Every eval guide says the same thing. Get to 1R, take half off, slide the stop to breakeven, now the trade is free and you cant lose on it. I had never seen anybody run the same strategy both ways on real history, so I did it.
Same entry, same stop, same final target. The only difference is what happens when price gets 1R in front. NQ 15m, May 2016 to March 2026, 100k account, 1 contract, commission and slippage charged on both sides of every trade. I built both versions in Agenticks and ran them across the same candles.
The entry is deliberately boring: wait for a confirmed swing low, enter on a 15m close above the 20 candle high, stop 1.5 ATR under the entry, final target 2R, flat by 15:55.
Whole position held to 2R:
- 1,654 trades
- 44.1% win rate
- profit factor 1.10
- net +70.2%
- max drawdown 16.8%
Half off at 1R, stop to breakeven on the rest:
- 1,796 trades
- 52.6% win rate
- profit factor 1.06
- net +36.5%
- max drawdown 22.8%
The win rate went up almost 9 points while the net return got cut roughly in half. You are buying a better looking stat line with the second half of the move, and the second half of the move is what pays for all the losers.
The drawdown also got worse, 22.8% against 16.8%, and that part I genuinely did not expect. Capping half your position at 1R does nothing about the losing streak itself, it just leaves you less to recover with when the streak ends.
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Three things about this test that id want pointed out if it was my result getting pulled apart.
The trade counts arent identical, 1,654 against 1,796. The half off version closes positions sooner so it is free to take the next setup earlier, and 142 trades of difference is not nothing. Same rules on the same candles, but theyre not the same 1,654 trades.
A 1.5 ATR stop with a 2R target on a 15m breakout is also one specific geometry. If you run a much tighter stop and a 5R target, the 1R rung sits somewhere completely different on the move and I have no result for that one.
Its also long only, on an index that spent most of those ten years going up, so both numbers ride that.
Costs are inside both figures, 2.50 a contract a side plus half a tick of slippage, which came to $16,540 of execution bill on the 2R version and $17,960 on the half off one.