# How to read a scan's hit rate

> What the 1, 5 and 20-day columns in a hit-rate table actually measure, why hit rate and payoff must be read together, and the three numbers that expose a scan that only looks good.

Canonical: https://patternsradar.com/blog/how-to-read-scan-hit-rate

Published 2026-08-16. Related scans: https://patternsradar.com/screener/52-week-high-breakout.md, https://patternsradar.com/screener/volume-shockers.md, https://patternsradar.com/screener/golden-cross.md, https://patternsradar.com/screener/hammer-oversold.md

Every scan page here has a panel that replays the query across the last 250 sessions and reports what its matches did next. The panel answers one question — *has this setup been worth a look?* — but only if you read it correctly, and the two most common misreadings both flatter bad scans.

## What the columns measure

For each past session where the scan matched, the replay records the close-to-close return over the next 1, 5 and 20 trading days, then aggregates. Three windows because setups have natural lifespans: a [hammer at support](https://patternsradar.com/screener/hammer-oversold.md) is a claim about the next few days, a [golden cross](https://patternsradar.com/screener/golden-cross.md) is a claim about the next few months, and grading either on the other's clock produces noise. Read the column that matches how long you actually hold.

## Misreading one: hit rate without payoff

A 65% hit rate sounds like an edge. It is not — not until you know the size of the wins against the size of the losses. A scan that is right 65% of the time for +1.2% and wrong 35% for −3.1% loses money at a hit rate that sounds excellent. The inverse is just as real: breakout scans like the [52-week high breakout](https://patternsradar.com/screener/52-week-high-breakout.md) often show hit rates near or below 50% and remain interesting, because the setup's premise is a few large continuations paying for many small failures.

So read the pair, never the percentage alone: *how often* it worked, and *how much* working and failing each paid. A scan is only as good as that product.

## Misreading two: the average without the count

The other trap is a beautiful average on eleven matches. Eleven matches in 250 sessions means the scan fires once a month; one lucky cluster — a single result week, one index rally — can carry the whole average. Before trusting any number in the table, look at how many signals produced it. A modest average across three hundred matches says more than a spectacular one across a dozen. High-frequency scans like [volume shockers](https://patternsradar.com/screener/volume-shockers.md) sit at the other pole: plenty of signals, weaker per-signal meaning, and the table shows you that trade-off instead of letting you assume it away.

## What this replay deliberately is not

The panel calls itself a sketch, and the word is chosen. Close-to-close returns assume you entered at the close the signal appeared — plausible for an end-of-day workflow, generous for anything else. There are no transaction costs, no slippage, no position sizing. And universe membership is measured as of today, which leans survivorship-positive: a stock that cratered out of the liquidity tier since is not in the replay to hurt the numbers.

None of that makes the sketch useless. It makes it a *filter*: a scan that cannot look good under these friendly assumptions has nothing to offer the unfriendly ones, and you have found that out in ninety milliseconds instead of ninety trades. The [longer walkthrough](https://patternsradar.com/blog/how-to-backtest-a-stock-scan.md) covers the method end to end.

## The habit worth building

Before acting on any scan — the prebuilt ones here, something translated [from Chartink](https://patternsradar.com/blog/chartink-formulas-to-sift.md), your own idea at eleven at night — open the panel and ask the three questions in order. How many signals? What did the holding window I actually use pay? Does the payoff survive the hit rate? Thirty seconds, and it is the difference between screening and folklore.