How do you go about formulating a strategy with a positive expectancy? Charlie Burton, trader and educator comments. Winning more than you lose. The way that I personally formulate strategies is to spot at recurring themes and then start testing - you take the basic theme - say a breakout at a certain level - if I use a stop loss here and a target here - how often would I be right. And I would use different levels to identify better strategies. Most traders focus their efforts on finding the best trading system but this will not by itself make you money. Please comment. The problems with most traders is mindset - they tend to hesitate when taking decisions especially when following systems.