Execution Efficiency · The Grading Stack
Two trades close at +1R. Only one of them was good.
Graded metrics
9
Measured in
R UNITS
Authority granted
NONE
Layer 01 — The chain
Pain, opportunity, conversion, surrender, friction, result.
The lab is read as a cause-and-effect sequence rather than a scoreboard. Adverse excursion is entry pain. Favourable excursion is opportunity generated. Capture efficiency is exit conversion. Giveback is opportunity surrendered. Fee drag is friction. Net outcome is what actually reached the account. Read in order, the chain separates a bad setup from a good setup managed badly, and a clean entry in a weak market from a strong setup damaged by cost conditions, and those four diagnoses have four different repairs.
Layer 02 — Six patterns worth memorising
The combinations name themselves once the axes are fixed.
Because every trade carries both a pain reading and an opportunity reading, the combinations form a small vocabulary that covers most of what a review needs to say.
- Low pain, high opportunity, high capture: clean alpha. Repeat the pattern and document the context.
- High pain, high opportunity, good outcome: the idea was right, the entry was late. Winning does not make it clean.
- Low pain, low opportunity: the entry may be fine and the market thin. Review regime and branch fit.
- High opportunity, low final result: management failed to monetize. Inspect trail, breakeven, and partial rules.
- High fees against small targets: friction is eating expectancy. Require better reward potential or avoid the conditions.
- Low adherence with a green outcome: a lucky result and weak process evidence. Log the deviation honestly.
Layer 03 — Fixed thresholds
Grade boundaries live in the configuration, not on recent averages.
The quality bands for adverse excursion, capture, and the rest are stored as configuration values rather than being derived from the current sample. A given grade therefore means the same thing in a winning month and a losing one. Curved grading would let a deteriorating quarter re-norm its own report card, and fixed thresholds are the only reason this month's grade is comparable to last year's.
Layer 04 — The authority boundary
It can say a branch is leaking. It cannot say take more risk.
The lab identifies where edge is being lost: a branch with poor capture, a timeframe carrying high adverse pressure, a cost environment consuming expectancy. It does not grant permission to increase risk, ignore a throttle cap, or bypass a gate state. If execution quality is improving while the gate is restrictive, the gate still wins, and the improvement is recorded as evidence for a later conversation rather than cashed immediately.
Reference
The nine metrics and what each one diagnoses
| Metric | Definition | What it diagnoses |
|---|---|---|
| Adverse excursion | Worst movement against the position, in R | Entry timing, stop placement, and noise tolerance |
| Favourable excursion | Best unrealised movement in favour, in R | Whether the setup generated enough opportunity to justify the risk |
| Capture efficiency | Realised positive outcome divided by favourable excursion | How much available opportunity was actually monetized |
| Giveback | Favourable excursion minus realised outcome, floored at zero | How much open profit was surrendered before exit |
| Adverse utilization | Absolute adverse excursion as a share of risk | How much of the original stop was consumed |
| Excursion ratio | Favourable divided by adverse excursion | Reward opportunity relative to pain absorbed |
| Stop efficiency score | Composite of adverse control and capture | Whether the entry, stop, and exit lifecycle was efficient |
| Fee drag | Total fees divided by initial risk dollars | How much of one risk unit friction consumed |
| Net outcome | Realised outcome minus fee drag | The expectancy that actually survived to the account |
Edge cases & failure modes
Where it can mislead
- !Values are entered in R units, not percentages, and a capture reading of 0.70 means seventy percent.
- !Fee drag is fees divided by risk dollars, never fees divided by profit, which would flatter losing trades.
- !A branch-integrity flag catches trades behaving outside their branch identity, such as a short-timeframe trade carrying swap exposure.
The governing idea
Reference
Each closed trade logs its worst adverse excursion and best favorable excursion. The lab plots them into quadrants and pairs the picture with capture efficiency, giveback, and fee drag - then the EV Driver Diagnostics rank which repair (entry location, coefficient, trail logic, cost avoidance) would move net expectancy most.
Every trade plotted by pain taken (MAE) versus opportunity generated (MFE). The four quadrants diagnose entry precision and exit management at a glance.
Connected inside MARS
This module doesn't work alone.
Go deeper
Operator briefs on this territory.
Deep dive — 01
Seven classifications: what the lab stamps on every trade.
Seven stamps per trade — and three of them audit the record rather than the trading.
Read the full brief →
Deep dive — 02
The week quality grade: counting states rather than averaging numbers.
Six bad trades in forty is a finding. The average that contains them is not.
Read the full brief →
Deep dive — 03
Efficiency zones: turning excursion data into a weekly grade.
Eighty numbers a week, compressed into zones and a grade. Compression is what gets the data actually read.
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.