How to Review Your Trades

Why review matters more than outcome

Most traders review trades the wrong way: they look at whether they made or lost money. This confuses process with outcome.

A good trade — one where you followed your rules perfectly — can still lose money due to random variance. A bad trade — one where you broke your rules — can still be profitable due to luck. If you only review outcomes, you will reward luck and punish discipline, which degrades your decision-making over time.

Effective trade review focuses on two questions:

1. Did I follow my plan?
2. Was the setup valid according to my rules?

Profitability is a downstream result. Process quality is something you can control and improve.

What to review in each trade

1. Entry checklist compliance

Before reviewing the outcome, ask: Did the setup meet all my criteria when I entered?

Check each item in your entry checklist:

• Was the setup valid?
• Did I wait for my trigger?
• Was the risk-reward ratio acceptable before entry?
• Was position size calculated correctly?

2. Stop-loss placement

Was the stop placed where the setup would be invalidated, or was it placed arbitrarily based on how much you were willing to lose?

A well-placed stop protects your capital while giving the trade room to work. A stop placed at a round number or at a fixed percentage without reference to market structure is a red flag.

3. Trade management

After entry, did you:

• Adjust the stop when the trade moved in your favour?
• Take partial profits at logical targets?
• Exit early due to fear rather than a valid reason?
• Hold beyond your original target due to greed?

4. Rule violations

Tag any rule violation explicitly. Common tags include:

• Impulse trade (entered without a valid setup)
• Oversized (position was larger than your risk rules allow)
• Early exit (closed the trade before the stop or target was hit)
• Late entry (entered after the optimal trigger point)
• Revenge trade (entered after a loss to recover quickly)

5. What you would do differently

Write one sentence: "Next time, I would..." This forces you to extract a specific, actionable lesson rather than a vague reflection.

Weekly review process

A 15–30 minute weekly review is more valuable than daily micro-reviews for most traders. Structure it as follows:

1. Review each closed trade using the checklist above
2. Calculate the week's metrics: win rate, average R, expectancy
3. Look for patterns: Are the losses clustered in certain conditions? Are violations concentrated at certain times?
4. Update your rules if needed: If multiple trades reveal a flaw in your entry criteria, revise the criteria — but only after seeing the pattern in at least 5–10 trades

Monthly and quarterly review

Once per month, zoom out:

• Is your expectancy improving or declining over the last 50 trades?
• Are violations trending up or down?
• What is your Discipline Tax — how much edge are you giving away by not following your rules?

Quarterly, compare your worst-performing strategy or setup against your best. Often, eliminating one weak setup type significantly improves overall expectancy.

How Tracktions supports trade review

Tracktions captures MAE, MFE, R-multiple, and rule violations automatically. The journal view shows each trade alongside your notes and tags. The Analytics dashboard calculates your Discipline Tax — the gap between what your system would have made if you had followed all your rules and what you actually made.

Review your trades in Tracktions →