MAE and MFE for futures traders

How far did each trade go against you before it worked, and how much did it show you before you closed it? Blindspot works out MAE and MFE for every futures trade automatically, from 1-minute price bars of the contract you traded. Nothing to type in.

Automatic MAE/MFE for every trade, from 1-minute bars
MNQ, MES, NQ, ES, MGC and other CME futures; history back to 2023–24 for MNQ, NQ, ES, MES and MGC
MAE vs P&L chart and MAE / MFE columns in points or dollars
Works with automatic Tradovate sync or a CSV import from your platform
Free while in beta

Create free account See the demo journal

Blindspot MAE vs P&L chart: each trade a dot, MAE in points across, P&L up and down; winners cluster under 15 points of MAE, losers spread out to 70 points, with a dashed watch zone line at 20 points — MAE vs P&L on the demo journal: winners rarely went more than 15 points against the trader; the losers that did kept going.

What MAE and MFE are

MAE, maximum adverse excursion, is the furthest price moved against a trade while it was open. A long from 21,000 that dipped to 20,988 before you sold at 21,020 had an MAE of 12 points.

MFE, maximum favorable excursion, is the furthest price moved in the trade's favour. If that same long touched 21,045 before you sold at 21,020, its MFE was 45 points and you kept 20 of them.

Your P&L says how a trade ended. MAE and MFE say what happened in between, and that is where stop and target decisions are made.

How Blindspot computes them

Your fills come in. From automatic Tradovate sync or a CSV from Tradovate, NinjaTrader, TopstepX, AMP, TradingView, DayTraders.com or MetaTrader 5. Blindspot pairs them into round-trip trades.
Blindspot fetches the bars. Every 10 minutes it picks up trades that have no MAE/MFE yet and reads the 1-minute bars of the contract you traded (the MNQZ6 contract month, not a generic "NQ") from entry to exit.
The extremes become MAE and MFE. For a long, the lowest low is the adverse move and the highest high the favourable one; for a short, the other way round. Both are shown in points or dollars.
Bad matches are refused. If your entry or exit price is outside the bars for those minutes, usually an export in the wrong timezone, the trade says so instead of showing a wrong value.

Which instruments are covered

Trades	Instruments	Bars from
Last 30 days	Futures Yahoo Finance carries: equity index (MNQ, MES, NQ, ES and the other index futures), energy, metals, currencies and rates	Yahoo Finance 1-minute bars
Older trades	MNQ and NQ from January 2024, ES and MES from December 2023, MGC from May 2023	Imported exchange 1-minute bars
Live	Contracts open in your Tradovate tab, with Trade Health (early access)	Optional live quote feed from a browser extension

Against exchange bars most trades come out within one point. A 1-minute bar can hold a move from just before your entry or just after your exit, so on very short scalps MAE and MFE can read a little high.

What you learn from them

Stops too tight. If many losers hit MAE close to your stop and then the price went your way, your stop sits inside normal noise. Compare the MAE of your winners: if winners routinely go 8 points against you, a 6-point stop will stop you out of good trades.
Stops too wide. If winners almost never go more than 10 points against you but your losers run to 30, the stop is giving the market room your winning trades never needed. The scatter chart above shows this pattern.
Giving back profits. A loser with a large MFE was a winner first. Sort by MFE on losing trades to find the trades where a break-even stop or a partial would have changed the result.
Targets too close. If your winners' MFE is regularly twice what you took, your exits are leaving most of the move behind.

Blindspot trades table with MAE and MFE columns in points next to entry, exit, duration and net P&L; a short MNQ trade with 23.75 points MAE and 3.75 MFE lost $137 — MAE and MFE next to every trade (demo data). Second row: 8 points against, 43.5 points in favour, and only $20 kept.

You can also ask an AI assistant. With the Blindspot MCP server connected, ChatGPT or Claude can read each trade's MAE and MFE: "Which of my losers had more than 20 points of MFE first?"

Frequently asked questions

What are MAE and MFE in trading?

MAE (maximum adverse excursion) is the furthest price moved against a trade while it was open. MFE (maximum favorable excursion) is the furthest it moved in the trade's favour. Both are measured from the entry price, in points or dollars.

How does Blindspot calculate MAE and MFE?

Every 10 minutes Blindspot takes trades without MAE/MFE and reads the 1-minute bars of the exact contract traded between entry and exit: the lowest low and highest high give the excursions. Bars come from a live quote feed if you set one up, imported exchange bars, or Yahoo Finance 1-minute bars.

Which futures have MAE/MFE in Blindspot?

Trades from the last 30 days on futures Yahoo Finance carries (index, energy, metals, currencies, rates). Older trades where exchange bars were imported: MNQ from January 2024, ES from December 2023 and MGC from May 2023, which also cover MES and NQ.

Do I need to enter highs and lows myself?

No. Blindspot needs only your fills, from an automatic Tradovate sync or a CSV import. The price data is fetched for you.

How accurate is MAE/MFE from 1-minute bars?

Against exchange bars most trades come out within one point. A 1-minute bar can include a move from before your entry or after your exit in the same minute, and Yahoo occasionally misses a minute's extreme. A trade whose prices don't fit the bars gets no value rather than a wrong one.

See what your trades did before they closed.

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