Weekly rules review: week of 5 October
Research and journaling only. Not financial advice.
Here's the review, checked against your plan only.
One gap affects several of the checks. Each row has one date, the entry date, and no exit date or time. The daily and weekly limits, rule 5 and the three-position cap all depend on when trades closed. For those checks I say what's missing and what the table still shows, and I don't guess at the rest.
1. Completed table
Risk $ = (entry - stop) x shares. Result R = result $ / risk $. I left out your other columns to keep the table narrow. They haven't changed.
| Date | Ticker | Setup | Entry | Stop | Shares | Exit | Result $ | Risk $ | Result R | Risk over $250? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mon 5 Oct | Ticker A | Pullback | 48.20 | 46.90 | 190 | 51.60 | +646.00 | 247.00 | +2.62R | No |
| Mon 5 Oct | Ticker B | Breakout | 112.50 | 108.00 | 55 | 107.40 | -280.50 | 247.50 | -1.13R | No |
| Tue 6 Oct | Ticker C | Breakout | 33.10 | 31.80 | 300 | 31.20 | -570.00 | 390.00 | -1.46R | Yes, by $140 |
| Tue 6 Oct | Ticker D | Pullback | 71.40 | 69.90 | 160 | 70.10 | -208.00 | 240.00 | -0.87R | No |
| Wed 7 Oct | Ticker E | Pullback | 25.60 | 24.80 | 310 | 27.40 | +558.00 | 248.00 | +2.25R | No |
| Thu 8 Oct | Ticker F | Breakout | 88.00 | 85.50 | 100, then +50 at 86.50 | 85.40 | -315.00 | 250.00 at entry, 300.00 after the add | -1.26R | Yes after the add, by $50 |
| Thu 8 Oct | Ticker G | none | 19.75 | 19.00 | 200 | 19.10 | -130.00 | 150.00 | -0.87R | No |
| Fri 9 Oct | Ticker A | Pullback | 50.10 | 48.80 | 190 | open | open | 247.00 | open | No |
Notes on the numbers:
- Every result you recorded matches (exit - entry) x shares. Ticker F matches once you include the added shares: 100 x (85.40 - 88.00) = -260.00, plus 50 x (85.40 - 86.50) = -55.00, for a total of -315.00.
- At entry, Ticker F risked exactly $250, which is at the limit, not over it. The 50 shares added at 86.50, with the stop still at 85.50, put another $50 at risk, so the position carried $300 in all. The R in the table uses the $250 entry risk, which is what your formula gives with the row's 100 shares. On the $300 it would be -1.05R.
- Ticker C's $390 at risk is 1.56% of the $25,000 account. Because that's more than $250, its R makes the loss look smaller than it was against your plan. The $570 loss is 2.28 times your $250 risk per trade.
2. Rules and setups
How each part of the plan checked out
- Long only: all eight trades are long. No break.
- Risk per trade ($250): over on Ticker C at entry and on Ticker F after the add.
- Setups: seven trades name one of your two setups, and Ticker G names none. I couldn't check the setup conditions themselves (the uptrend, the 20-day average and the close back above it, or a range held three weeks or more and the close above it). I also couldn't check where the stop sat relative to the pullback low or the middle of the range. The journal doesn't record the average, the pullback low or the range, so I skipped these checks.
- Rule 1 (no entries in the first 15 minutes): only Ticker D has an entry time, so I skipped this check for the other seven.
- Rule 2 (stop set in the broker before entry): no row records this, so I skipped it.
- Rule 3 (never move a stop further away): broken on Ticker C. Ticker B closed at 107.40, $0.60 under its 108.00 stop, and Ticker F closed at 85.40, $0.10 under 85.50. A gap or a fill past the stop would explain both. The rows don't say which, so I haven't counted either as a break.
- Rule 4 (never add to a losing position): broken on Ticker F. Friday's Ticker A is a new position opened after Monday's was closed, so it isn't an add.
- Rule 5 (no new trade on the same day as a losing exit): this needs exit dates. Your own note lets me place one case, Ticker G, which is in the table below.
- Most positions open at once (3): this also needs exit dates. See the Tuesday note below.
- Holding period (two to ten days): only Ticker A (Mon) has a recorded hold, three days, which is inside the range. I skipped this check for the rest.
Every break found
| Trade | Break | In your journal? |
|---|---|---|
| Ticker C (Tue) | Risk per trade: $390 at risk, over $250 | No |
| Ticker C (Tue) | Rule 3: stop moved from 31.80 to 31.20 | Yes |
| Ticker D (Tue) | Rule 1: entered at 9:35, five minutes after the 9:30 open (assuming Eastern time) | No, marked Y |
| Ticker F (Thu) | Rule 4: bought 50 more at 86.50, below the 88.00 entry | No, marked Y |
| Ticker F (Thu) | Risk per trade: $300 at risk after the add | No, marked Y |
| Ticker G (Thu) | No setup | Yes |
| Ticker G (Thu) | Rule 5: entered after a losing exit the same day. This rests on your note, "Wanted to make back the morning", because the table has no exit times | No |
A possible break that depends on Ticker B's exit date. Ticker A (Mon) was open all of Tuesday, because you held it three days. Ticker C and Ticker D were both entered on Tuesday, and both closed at a loss. Suppose Ticker B was still open when Tuesday began. Then, at the second of the two Tuesday entries, one of two things was true. Either four positions were open (A, B, C and D), which is over your cap of three. Or B, or the first of the two Tuesday trades, had already closed at a loss that day, which makes the second entry a rule 5 break. If B closed on Monday, none of this applies. Your exit date for B will settle it.
Trades that followed the plan in full: 4 of 8. These are Ticker A (Mon), Ticker B, Ticker E and Ticker A (Fri, still open), or 3 of the 7 closed trades. Your own column marks 6 of 8, and the difference is Ticker D and Ticker F. "In full" here means I found no break in what the journal records. On most rows I couldn't check rule 1, rule 2, the setup conditions, the holding period or anything that depends on exit dates.
3. Daily and weekly loss limits
A loss counts against a limit on the day you take it. Without exit dates I can't total losses by day or follow the weekly total as it moved, so I skipped the full check. I'm reading both limits as net closed P&L, with gains offsetting losses. Even without exit dates, the table shows the following.
Daily ($500)
- Ticker C lost $570, which is more than $500 on its own. That one trade took whatever day it closed past the limit, unless a gain closed the same day and offset it. At the original 31.80 stop the loss would have been about $390 (300 x 1.30), which is under the limit. Moving the stop added $180.
- Thursday is the only day the notes give timing for. Suppose Ticker F's -$315 was the morning loss and Ticker G also closed on Thursday. Then Thursday came to -$445, which is under $500, as long as nothing else closed that day.
Weekly ($750)
- The seven closed trades total -$299.50, which was inside $750 at the end of the week.
- Whether you reached the limit during the week depends on the order the trades closed in. The five losing trades total $1,503.50, and the two gains ($1,204.00) bring the week back to -$299.50. Ticker B and Ticker C together lost $850.50, for example. If both closed before either gain, you reached the weekly limit at that point.
- If you count losses only, without netting gains, the week's losses certainly went past $750. The question is still when.
Did you keep trading after reaching a limit? I can't tell without exit dates and times. There are two things to check against your broker's fills. First, did you enter anything after Ticker C closed, on the day it closed? Second, was your running total for the week below -$750 at any point before your last entry, Ticker A on Friday? If it was, that entry came after the weekly stop.
If you add columns for exit date and time, entry time, and whether the stop was in the broker (Y/N), next week's review can run all of these checks in full.
4. Patterns in the breaks
These patterns each have at least two trades behind them:
- Feeling before the trade. The four trades with a break are exactly the four where you wrote something other than calm: Ticker C (hopeful), Ticker D (annoyed), Ticker F (impatient) and Ticker G (frustrated). None of the four trades marked calm had a break: Ticker A (Mon), Ticker B, Ticker E and Ticker A (Fri).
- Setup, and changes made after entry. Two of your three breakouts had a break (C and F), compared with one of your four pullbacks (D). On both breakouts, the break was a change you made after entry while the price was below your entry: you moved the stop down on C and added shares on F. Both changes raised the money at risk, on C from $390 to $570 and on F from $250 to $300.
- Day of the week. All the breaks fell on Tuesday and Thursday, and on each of those days both trades broke something. There were no breaks on Monday, Wednesday or Friday.
These had too few trades to count as patterns:
- Time of day: only Ticker D has an entry time, so there's just one trade to go on.
- The trade after a loss: without exit times, only Ticker G can be placed after a loss, and that comes from your note. That's one trade. Ticker B's exit date could add a second (see the Tuesday note in section 2).
5. The week in R
-0.72R across the seven closed trades: +2.62, -1.13, -1.46, -0.87, +2.25, -1.26 and -0.87. Ticker A (Fri) is still open, so it isn't included. If you measure Ticker F on its $300 total risk instead, the week comes to -0.51R. In dollars it's -$299.50. These figures are for context only.
6. Journal questions
- On Ticker C and Ticker F you changed the trade while the price was below your entry: you moved the stop on one and added shares on the other. Just before each change, what did you believe was about to happen, and what did the original stop mean to you at that moment?
- Every break this week followed a feeling other than calm: hopeful, annoyed, impatient or frustrated. For each of those four trades, what had just happened before you entered? Did you notice the feeling before you placed the order, and if so, when?
- You marked Ticker D and Ticker F as following the plan, even though you entered D at 9:35 and added to F while it was losing. You also didn't flag Ticker C's 300 shares for size. When you fill in the "Followed plan" column, what are you checking against, and what would you need in front of you to catch all three?