Return on risk

A trade’s expected profit shown as a percentage of the most you can lose on a defined-risk position — it answers how much you earn per dollar at risk.

Return on risk expresses a trade's expected profit as a percentage of the most it can lose, so it answers a simple question: how much do you earn for each dollar you actually put at risk? On a defined-risk position the denominator is clean — the maximum loss is known up front — which makes the ratio easy to compute and easy to compare across very different setups. A spread that expects to make 30 dollars on a 100-dollar max loss shows a 30% return on risk.

In practice it is the number that lets you rank trades on a common yardstick. A cash-secured put and a narrow credit spread might promise similar dollar profits, but if one ties up far more capital its return on risk is lower, and that is what tells you where the account works hardest. Because it uses the probability-weighted expected profit rather than the best case, it leans on the same logic as expected value, just rescaled to the capital committed instead of stated in raw dollars.

The common mistake is chasing a high return on risk without checking how often it is realised. A rich percentage on a low-probability trade can be worse than a modest one you hit far more reliably, and the metric says nothing about the size of the tail when the trade fails. Read it next to probability of profit and max loss, and prefer the version built on expected profit over one that quietly assumes the best-case payoff every time.

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Educational use only. Quotes are delayed ~15 minutes and nothing here is financial advice. Options trading involves substantial risk of loss.