Writing a trading plan

A trading plan is a short document that answers, in advance, every question you will otherwise answer badly under pressure. What markets do I trade? On what timeframe? What does a valid setup look like? Where exactly do I enter, where is the stop, where is the target, and how much do I risk? When do I stop trading for the day? Six answers, one page. Most losing traders cannot produce that page.

Write entries as conditions, not impressions. "Buy when EUR/USD retests a daily support zone after a higher low and the retest candle closes back above the zone" is a rule: tomorrow, you will be able to tell whether it happened. "Buy when the pullback looks healthy" is a mood, and moods reliably look healthiest when you already want to be in.

Include the negative space explicitly. A plan should name the conditions in which you do not trade: major data release within the hour, spread above your threshold, already at maximum heat, first trade of the day already lost. The no-trade rules are what actually protect the account, because the losing trades you never took do not need to be recovered.

A plan changed while a position is open is not a plan. It is the trade negotiating with you, and it always wins that negotiation.

Add operational detail people skip: which session hours you trade, how many attempts a setup gets before you leave it alone, what you do if the platform disconnects with a position open, and when you review. These are boring and each one has cost somebody real money.

Then treat the plan as versioned, not sacred. Change it deliberately between sessions with a written reason, never mid-trade. A plan changed while a position is open is not a plan at all — it is the trade negotiating with you, and it always wins that negotiation.