# How to Analyze Trades by Currency Pair

> By-symbol analysis is where most multi-pair traders find their biggest improvement opportunities. Here is how to run it and what to do with the findings.

**Tags:** currency-pair, by-symbol, analysis, forex-metrics
**URL:** https://traderjournal.app/trading-metrics/how-to-analyze-trades-by-currency-pair

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# How to Analyze Trades by Currency Pair

By-symbol analysis breaks down your trading performance by instrument, showing you which currency pairs are profitable, which are marginal, and which are actively costing you money. For most multi-pair traders, this is where the most actionable insight lives.

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## Why By-Symbol Analysis Matters

Imagine a trader who makes $1,200 per month across six currency pairs. Without symbol-level data, they feel like a profitable trader and continue as is.

With symbol-level data, the breakdown might look like:

| Symbol | Net P&L | Win Rate | Trades |
|---|---|---|---|
| EURUSD | +$800 | 61% | 42 |
| GBPUSD | +$650 | 58% | 38 |
| AUDUSD | +$380 | 54% | 22 |
| USDJPY | -$220 | 47% | 25 |
| EURJPY | -$310 | 44% | 28 |
| GBPJPY | -$100 | 49% | 18 |

The trader is losing $630 per month on three pairs while making $1,830 on three others. Net is $1,200. But removing the three losing pairs would produce $1,830 per month - a 53% improvement without changing strategy, risk rules, or analysis method.

This is the value of by-symbol analysis.

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## Running the Analysis

In Trader Journal, the Reports tab includes a by-symbol breakdown for the selected date range. It shows:

- Number of trades per symbol
- Net P&L per symbol

Use a 90-day window minimum for meaningful data. With fewer than 15-20 trades per symbol, the results are too noisy to be reliable.

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## What to Look for

**Consistently negative symbols:**
Any pair with negative net P&L across 3 or more consecutive months is a candidate for removal from your watchlist.

**Low trade count, extreme results:**
A pair with 5 trades and a large positive P&L may be luck. Wait for 20+ trades before drawing conclusions.

**Win rate vs net P&L discrepancy:**
A pair might have a high win rate but negative P&L if average losses are large. Or a low win rate and positive P&L if average wins are large. Look at both.

**Volume vs performance:**
Are you taking more trades on your worst-performing pairs? Some traders unconsciously overtrade the pairs they "like" even when those pairs consistently underperform.

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## What to Do With the Findings

**Remove consistently losing pairs:**
If a pair has been negative for 3+ months across 50+ trades, stop trading it. This is the single most immediately actionable improvement most traders can make.

**Increase focus on strongest pairs:**
If your best 2-3 pairs account for most of your profit, study those pairs more deeply. What conditions make them work? Can you take more high-quality setups on them?

**Investigate marginal pairs:**
A pair with near-zero net P&L over 6 months might be fine (breakeven pairs are neutral, not harmful) or might be worth trying to improve before abandoning.

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## Session and Symbol Interaction

Take the by-symbol analysis one level deeper by looking at your best pairs broken down by session (using your session tags). GBPUSD during the London session may perform very differently from GBPUSD during the New York session.

This cross-dimensional analysis (symbol x session) is where traders often find their most precisely defined edge.

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