Trading metrics explained

The Calmar ratio is annual return divided by maximum drawdown, usually measured over the last 36 months. A Calmar ratio of 2 means the yearly return was twice the worst drawdown.

In MetaTrader 5 testing statistics, recovery factor is net profit divided by balance drawdown (MQL5 documentation, checked November 2026). Higher is better: the strategy earned its worst drawdown back more times.

Above 1 is profitable; many traders look for 1.5 or more over a large sample. Very high values on few trades usually do not last. Check yours with the profit factor calculator.

Sharpe divides excess return by all volatility. Sortino divides it by downside volatility only, so a strategy with large winning days is not penalised for them.

More is better. Win rate and profit factor from 10 trades are mostly noise; many traders want at least 30 to 100 trades before trusting them.

Yes. The free tier costs $0 forever and includes two accounts, manual trade entry and CSV import - enough to journal a live account properly, with win rate, P&L and equity curve all calculated for you. There is no credit card required to start. Pro ($25/month flat) adds unlimited accounts, MT4/MT5/cTrader/NinjaTrader auto-sync, AI insights on your trading (1,000 trade-analyses a month), monthly reports and full export, and every new account gets Pro free for 5 trading days with no card. The pricing is deliberately simple: one plan, one price, no per-feature upsells.

Yes, and it needs no card. Every new Dusk Analyst account gets Pro free for 5 trading days from sign-up: auto-sync from MT4, MT5, cTrader and NinjaTrader 8, AI Insights with 1,000 credits, monthly reports and unlimited accounts. After that Pro is $25/month, and you can cancel anytime from Billing in the app. If you skip it, the account moves to Free with every trade kept.

Yes - CSV import is available on every plan, including free. If you've been tracking trades in a spreadsheet, broker export or another journal, export the CSV from wherever it lives and import it into Dusk Analyst; the journal matches it against your accounts and keeps your history continuous. Import is also the fallback for platforms that don't run MT4, MT5, cTrader or NinjaTrader 8. For MT4/MT5/cTrader/NinjaTrader terminals, Pro auto-syncs going forward and the EA backfills any trades your terminal missed while it was off. Any platform that exports a CSV of your trade history works. Dusk Analyst recognises TradingView, Tradovate, cTrader, MT4 and MT5 exports on sight; for anything else you map your columns once and that parser is saved for next time. Comma, semicolon and tab files are all handled, day-first and month-first dates are detected from the file itself, and any row that cannot be read is listed for you rather than dropped quietly.

Pro includes 1,000 AI trade-analyses every month. One credit covers one trade, so asking a question about a 40-trade week costs 40 credits and you can keep asking. The allowance resets on the 1st of each month and the counter sits in the top bar of the app, so you always know where you stand. Narrowing a question to one account or a shorter date range makes the same allowance go much further. Free accounts get a small number of AI credits to try AI Insights, alongside the full journal, analytics and weekly reports, and the free Pro week (5 trading days, no card) includes the full monthly allowance.