Strategy Performance

They answer different questions. The realized figure above counts only trades that have fully finished — for each one, what it earned per dollar committed, for the days that dollar was committed — and ignores everything still open. The “Annualized Return” figure above it is the whole account's actual experience projected to a yearly rate: it includes those same finished trades, but it also counts every position still open — and it values each open position pessimistically, at what it would cost to pull out of that trade today, accepting the market's early-exit discount rather than waiting for the trade to finish. Income a position hasn't fully earned yet isn't counted; the possibility it finishes badly is. That built-in caution is most of the gap between the two numbers. As more trades reach the finish line — winners and the occasional loser alike — the two figures should gradually drift toward each other, and where they settle is the best estimate of the strategy's true long-run pace.