What's your early warning system for yourself?

The bad stretch doesn't start with the blown account — it starts with the missed journal entry, the second oversized trade, the "just this once". The early warning system catches the small signs before the big one.

What's your early warning system for yourself? — moving average crossover diagram
A fast moving average crossing a slower one

What are your signs?

  • the behaviours that precede your bad stretches
  • how you track them
  • the intervention that fires when they appear
What's your early warning system for yourself? — drawdown and recovery diagram
An equity curve during a drawdown and its recovery

The journal guide is where the signs become visible.

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.

Read the full guide

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