MAE/MFE Lab — The Formula Family
Six numbers that grade every trade.
Layer 01 — The formula reference
Straight from the lab's formula sheet.
Each formula isolates one dimension of execution quality:
- MAE R — worst unrealized drawdown of the trade; Adverse Utilization = |MAE R| shows how much of the stop was consumed.
- MFE R — highest unrealized profit before close; opportunity generation.
- Capture Efficiency = MAX(0, Outcome R) ÷ MFE R — how much of the available move was actually kept.
- Giveback R = MAX(0, MFE R − Outcome R) — open profit surrendered before exit.
- Fee R Drag = Total Fees ÷ Risk $ — how much of 1R costs consumed.
- Net Outcome R = Outcome R − Fee R Drag — the realistic result after friction.
Layer 02 — Reading them together
One trade, six dimensions, one verdict.
A +1R winner with 0.9 capture, minimal giveback, and light fee drag is high-quality alpha. The same +1R with 0.4 capture, heavy giveback, and swap damage is a leak wearing a winner's jersey. The formulas exist so those two trades stop getting the same grade in review.
How MARS uses this
MARS is a closed loop, not a pipeline. Trades produce evidence, evidence produces weekly grades, grades move gate state, gate state feeds the throttle, and the throttle governs what the next execution is allowed to be. No stage is optional and no stage runs on memory or mood - each one reads the outputs of the stage before it.
How it benefits you
Discipline stops depending on willpower. Because every decision point consumes the previous stage's output, skipping a step becomes visible instead of invisible - and the system keeps improving itself, since every completed loop leaves the evidence base one cycle richer than it found it.
The MARS operating loop: execute, capture, score, gate, throttle, deploy - every cycle feeding evidence into the next.
In practice
MARS never trusts a single blended figure. Weekly branch probabilities produce a separate EV per branch, weighted by the live profile (45 / 33.75 / 11.25 / 10 by default) into the blend. Reviews read the decomposition first: which branch produced the edge, which one leaked it, and whether the weights still match the evidence.
Branch-level EV decomposition with blend weights. The blended number alone would hide exactly this picture.
Layer 03 — Where the numbers come from
Fed by the Journal, judged by branch.
MAE, MFE, fees, and duration are captured per trade in CP3's Journal. The lab computes the family per trade, aggregates by branch and timeframe, and hands the results to branch-aware judgment — because 'good' capture means something different in each branch.
Layer 04 — Recording standard
Excursions are captured in R, at the extremes, without rounding.
MAE and MFE are logged as R multiples at the actual adverse and favorable extremes — not eyeballed, not rounded to friendly numbers. The standard matters because the formulas that grade efficiency amplify input sloppiness: a half-R of optimistic rounding per trade compounds into a repair engine pointed at problems that don't exist.
The governing idea
Connected inside MARS
This module doesn't work alone.
Go deeper
Operator briefs on this territory.
Deep dive — 01
Capture efficiency is a ratio, and ratios have blind spots the grade never mentions.
Every loser scores zero. Every tiny-MFE trade scores wildly. Both are properties of the formula, not the trading.
Read the full brief →
Deep dive — 02
MAE/MFE: what your trades did while you weren't looking.
Reading maximum adverse and favorable excursion to audit stops, targets, and exits with evidence.
Read the full brief →
Deep dive — 03
MAE and MFE: the two numbers that describe a trade's whole life.
How deep it went, how high it reached. Two numbers that turn a result into a path.
Read the full brief →
Every module ships in the complete MARS package.
One price. Eleven workbooks, three TradingView indicators, and the full manual library — $497.