Reconcile Fills, Partials and Net R

Captain · CP05: Journaling and Improvement · About 25–30 minutes

Safety rule: Preserve the original evidence and include every loss, rejected setup and cost in your analysis.

Your mission today

By the end you can reconstruct a complete trade from multiple broker deals and compute its net R using original cash risk.

Before you start

Use the frozen CP01 strategy card, a demo execution report, your risk charter and a calculator. All numerical examples below are imaginary.

1. Understand the evidence problem

A platform may record many deals for what a learner thinks of as one trade. Partial exits, several entry fills, commission, financing and account-currency conversion can be spread across different rows. Net R describes the realised cash result divided by the predeclared initial cash risk. The initial denominator must not be quietly changed after the outcome.

A platform history usually records deals and orders, not necessarily one neat trade row. Partial exits, commissions, swaps, multiple executions and broker timezone differences must be combined with care. A realised R multiple compares net result to the initial planned cash risk, with a clearly stated convention.

Execution may consist of several orders and deals. Reconstruct the complete economic trade and distinguish account deposits from trading performance.

2. Worked example: what can go wrong?

An imaginary trade has a $10 planned initial risk. After two partial exits, the summed gross price profit is +$14. Separate commission and financing total $1.50, so net profit is $14−$1.50=+$12.50. Realised R = $12.50÷$10=+1.25R. If the same fills had lost $14 in price before those costs, net would be −$15.50 or −1.55R. Show the loss case when reviewing tail risk.

The earlier preserved source also illustrated: A trade risks a planned $10. It makes +$14 gross price P/L and incurs $1.50 total fees, so net is +$12.50 and realised R is +1.25R using the original $10 budget. If it exited in two partials, sum both net deal results before assigning R.

Original Black Box Journey educational diagram. Fictional results are not a verified market edge.

3. Follow a reproducible review

1. Group all entry and exit deals belonging to one economic position.
2. Sum signed volumes and reconcile final remaining exposure.
3. Calculate price P/L from actual fills, then add fees and swaps once.
4. Convert to account currency using documented broker records.
5. Divide net result by the original planned cash-risk amount.

A complete record is more valuable than a flattering summary. A reviewer should be able to reproduce the decision using the same information.

4. Identify the failure mode

Do not count deposits, withdrawals or transfers as trade P/L. Check whether your deal-price calculation already includes spread before adding costs. A net R of +1.25 on one trade says nothing about the strategy's long-term expectancy.

Unsafe alternative: A student reports +1.4R by omitting fees or changes the denominator to the reduced risk after moving a stop. That makes comparison across trades misleading.

5. Produce the independent research deliverable

The original lab requires: Reconcile ten multi-deal sample records including three partial exits and two trades with swap or conversion charges.

Record the original input, full trade set, execution costs, skipped events and the exact comparison. If a result changes after a correction, keep both versions.

6. Reconcile partial fills to one net R result

Synthetic EURUSD trade: An initial 0.20-lot long is worth $2 per pip in this invented contract. Its stop is 10 pips away, so initial planned price risk is −$20 before costs. Half the position, 0.10 lot, closes after a 10-pip favourable move for +$10. The remaining 0.10 lot closes after a 5-pip adverse move from original entry for −$5. Gross result is +$5. With $1 of combined hypothetical charges, net is +$4.

R-multiple compares net result with the original planned risk. Here net R is $4 / $20 = +0.20R. Do not report this as a full 10-pip winner or calculate R using the remaining half-position's smaller stop budget. Partial exits change trade accounting, not the denominator frozen before entry.

Reconciliation drill: Create separate rows for opening fill, each partial, final close, volume, quote side, price, fees and conversion. Sum them to one net cash result. Then divide by the originally recorded cash risk. Compare with the broker statement and explain any discrepancy rather than inventing a missing fill.

Common mistake

Reporting a favourable final P/L as if it proves every earlier decision was valid. Keep process compliance and statistical outcome in separate columns.

Plain-English glossary

• Deal: Completed execution recorded by the platform.
• Partial: Execution closing only part of a position.
• Net P/L: Cash result after applicable charges.
• R multiple: Trade result divided by original planned risk.
• Reconciliation: Matching each result to broker records.

Try it yourself

Reconcile ten multi-deal sample records including three partial exits and two trades with swap or conversion charges. Include at least one losing and one rejected observation. Write the denominator and units beside every statistic.

What you can now do

• Reconstruct a complete trade from multiple broker deals and compute its net R using original cash risk.
• Show an adverse case using exact currency or R units.
• Explain the limits of the evidence without promising profit.

Next lesson

CP05.3 · Win Rate, Expectancy and Drawdown.