What counts as cheating in your own trading rules?
Rules you set yourself are easy to bend: "that wasn't really a breakout", "I'll close this one manually just this once". Self-cheating is invisible to everyone but the account balance.
What are your tell-tale bends?
- the rule you most often reinterpret
- how you catch yourself doing it
- what enforcement actually works
The journal guide is where cheating becomes visible — which is half the cure.
Background: How to keep a trading journal that actually improves your trading
A journal turns a pile of trades into evidence. What to record, the numbers worth calculating and a weekly review routine that takes less than an hour.
What should a trading journal include?
For each trade: the pair, direction, size, entry, stop, target, risk, the reason for the trade, how you felt, the result in money and in R, whether you followed your plan, and chart screenshots.
How do I calculate expectancy?
Multiply your win rate by your average win, then subtract your loss rate multiplied by your average loss. Measured in R, a positive result means the approach has made money per trade on average.
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