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After a few hundred live trades on a new strategy, going through every one for costs is one of the most useful reviews you can do. The four lines to separate are gross result, commission, spread and slippage.

A worked example shows why it matters. Suppose 300 trades on EURUSD and GBPUSD on a raw account:

• Gross result: +142 pips.
• Commission: −63 pips equivalent.
• Spread: −51 pips.
• Slippage: −19 pips.
• Net: +9 pips.

In that case the entries work, and costs take about 94% of the gross. Numbers like these are easy to reach: at roughly 0.4 pips of cost per trade, 300 trades cost 120 pips before a single outcome.

What the breakdown usually points to:

1. Trade count is the multiplier. Marginal setups that break even gross become net losers.
2. Pairs differ. A wider spread and more stop slippage can make one pair far more expensive than it looks.
3. Session edges cost more. The first and last minutes of a session, while liquidity forms or leaves, tend to be the expensive ones.
4. Very small targets rarely survive. Under 4 pips, cost is a large share of every win.

Your deal history has every number needed. If you've done a similar breakdown, what share of gross did costs take?

I did a breakdown like this on about 250 trades from a GBPUSD and EURJPY scalping plan earlier this year, and costs took a little over 70 percent of gross. That was on a raw account at around 3.5 dollars per side, so commission was the biggest single line, with spread second and slippage a fairly distant third.

The trade count point was the main lesson. When I sorted trades by setup quality, the weakest third was roughly break even before costs and clearly negative after. Removing them cut my trade count by a third but almost doubled the net result, because they were paying full costs for no gross edge.

Session edges showed up too, but in a slightly different way than I expected. The first five minutes of London were expensive mostly because of spread, while the last half hour of New York was expensive because of slippage on stops. I now treat those windows separately and only trade the London open when the target is at least eight pips.