A Friday review should classify each closed trade by rule adherence before you look at profit or loss. A loss can be a good trade when you sized it correctly, respected the stop, and accepted the planned risk; a profitable trade can be a bad win when it succeeded only because a rule break happened to pay.
In 1970, Apollo 13 lost an oxygen tank on its way to the Moon. The crew and Mission Control had to solve immediate problems with limited systems, including adapting square command-module carbon dioxide canisters for the lunar module’s round receptacles. The outcome was uncertain while they worked through the failure. In Lost Moon, Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger document the mission as a chain of constrained decisions, checked against what the spacecraft could actually support.
That is the useful shape of a Friday review. You are not asking whether the market rescued you. You are checking whether the decision could hold up under the rules you set before the position moved.
Educational content. Not financial advice.
Start with the trade plan, not the closing price
Open the journal entry you made before entering. If you did not make one, record that fact before reconstructing a reason from memory.
For every closed trade, write down:
- The setup that qualified the trade.
- Your entry condition and actual entry.
- Position size and the amount you planned to risk.
- Stop location, target or exit condition, and the reason for each.
- The rule that would have kept you out of the trade.
- Any change made after entry.
Then hide the P&L temporarily. A green number has a strong effect on memory. It can turn “I doubled size after a loss” into “I had conviction.” A red number can turn a well-sized, rule-following trade into “a mistake.” The journal should preserve the evidence before the result changes the story you tell yourself.
A simple classification works well: followed, partly followed, or broke rules. Add one sentence naming the rule involved. “Followed: entered only after the planned level held, risk stayed within limit, stop was unchanged.” Or: “Broke rules: added to the position after entry without a written condition.”
Give process and outcome separate scores
Once the rule classification is complete, record the result. Keep the two judgments separate.
A trade that loses its planned risk can still receive a strong process score. The setup occurred, the position size matched the risk limit, and the exit happened where the plan said it would. That trade gives you usable data about the setup, even when the market did not move your way.
A bad win needs a more direct label. Perhaps you entered early because price was running. Perhaps you widened a stop, increased size after a gain, or held through a condition that should have closed the position. The profit does not repair the decision. It can make that decision harder to spot.
This is where a journal becomes different from a performance report. Performance metrics tell you what happened to capital. A journal can show whether you repeatedly acted in a way that exposes capital to a larger loss later. The distinction matters when you review position sizing after a winning streak, as in What Happens When a $300 Gain Determines Your Position Size?.
Review rule breaks by category, not by emotion
At the end of the week, group rule breaks instead of reading the trades in the order they happened. A sequence can feel like a personal verdict. Categories show the actual pattern.
You might find three exits that ignored the initial stop, two entries taken before confirmation, and one position that exceeded your stated risk limit. That is more useful than “Friday was frustrating.”
Use categories that match your own plan:
- Entry discipline: early entries, late entries, or trades outside the setup.
- Position sizing: risk above the limit, unplanned adds, or size based on recent P&L.
- Exit discipline: moved stops, missed exits, or targets changed without a written rule.
- Approval discipline: signals or orders approved without checking the criteria you require.
An approval gate can create a deliberate pause before an order executes. It cannot make a vague plan precise. Write the approval conditions clearly enough that Friday’s review can answer whether you met them. The same gap appears when historical testing meets live decisions: backtests can estimate patterns, but they cannot know the conditions present when you approve a real order.
Choose one correction for the next week
Do not respond to a bad week by adding six new rules. Find the repeated process error with the largest potential cost and write one concrete correction.
If stops moved three times, the correction might be: “No stop adjustment unless the original plan names the condition. Record the condition before moving it.” If entries came early, it might be: “Wait for the planned confirmation candle to close. No exceptions based on speed.”
Apollo 13’s crew could not solve every problem at once. They worked within constraints, tested what they could, and addressed the failure in front of them. Your Friday review needs the same restraint. Classify the trade first. Record the outcome second. Let the next week’s rule come from the evidence, not from the relief of a bad win or the disappointment of a good loss.
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