Active Days %
Share of trading days on which equity moved (non-zero daily P&L). High = trades most days; low = long idle stretches. A percentage, not a count.
- Computed from
- Equity curve
- Scope
- Single report
- Range
- 0 – 100%
- Direction
- Context-dependent
Active Days % is the share of an account's recorded days on which its value actually moved — the days the equity curve (the account's value tracked over time) ended different from the day before. Track record length tells you how many days of history there are; Active Days % tells you how many of them were busy. It's a calendar-density measure, not a count of trades and not a quality score.
How it's calculated
We take the account's end-of-day value for each day, and check whether it changed from the day before. Active Days % is the fraction of days where it did.
Active Days % = ( days the value changed / total days in the record ) × 100
- days the value changed
- days whose end-of-day equity differs from the prior day — a trade closed, or an open position was re-valued (marked to market) at a new price
- total days in the record
- the number of days in the daily equity series — the same count reported as Track Record Length
What it tells you
Active Days % is descriptive — there is no single "good" number, and both ends carry meaning. It tells you what kind of record you're reading, which changes how the other figures should be weighed.
| Value | Reading | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| > 80% | Always in market | Rarely flat. Can be a healthy systematic strategy — but just as often means perpetual exposure with no risk-off periods (the signature of always-in-the-market styles like carry, grid, and martingale). Not a quality signal on its own; check that drawdown and exposure are controlled. |
| 30–80% | Selective | Busy a good share of days, with flat stretches in between. Typical for most discretionary trading. |
| 15–30% | Sparse | Most days were flat. Day-level stats rest on relatively few live days. |
| < 15% | Occasional | Activity is rare. For a discretionary trader this can be discipline (sitting out with no edge); but the day-based figures rest on very few moving days, so read them as thin. |
A record spanning 500 days that moved on 350 of them is 70% active. The same 500-day length active on only 50 days is 10% — the length is real, but the day-by-day statistics are built on just fifty live days.
Pitfalls
- It's not trade count. A single large position held open is re-valued every day, lifting Active Days % toward 100% with very few actual trades. Lots of activity is not lots of independent bets — check the trade count separately.
- Zero days distort daily ratios — they don't just shrink the sample. A flat day is a real observation, not missing data. But when most days are flat, that mass of zeros deflates measured daily volatility and can inflate a daily Sharpe or Sortino — so a flattering risk-adjusted number on a low-activity record should be treated with suspicion, not taken at face value. (In EquityTruth these ratios run on a daily series too — one return per trading day — so the same deflation touches them; the effect is just as strong for the win-day and average-day figures.)
- Risky systems look continuously active. Martingale and grid strategies (which keep adding to losing positions and almost always hold something open) show a high Active Days % by construction; it says nothing about whether the bets are independent or safe.
- A high % on a short record is still thin. Density doesn't substitute for length — 90% active over three weeks is still three weeks. Always pair this with Track Record Length.
A near-100% Active Days % alongside a tiny trade count usually means one or a few positions held open the whole time — perpetual market exposure, not a busy strategy. Read it next to the trade count and Sharpe ratio before trusting any "always working" impression.
Related
Active Days % only means something next to Track Record Length — together they separate how long a record is from how much of it was live. Lean on both whenever you read Sharpe ratio, total return, or max drawdown: figures resting on many days but few active ones are built on a smaller set of real events than the length alone suggests.