How do you typically end your trading week? Do you just close your trading platform and spend the night in a bar getting drunk to forget the past week or do you hit the couch to watching some movies? There is nothing wrong with that, but let’s give you a few tips on how to end your trading week in a more effective way so that you can enjoy your weekend with a clean consciousness.

Here is our 7 points checklist that will help you improve your weekly trading review:

1) Did you meet your weekly, non-monetary trading goals? Did you make progress?

It is important not to get hung up on short-term monetary goals. Forcing weekly returns almost always leads to underperformance. Non-monetary goals typically include avoiding bad habits and following your rules. For that, check your Tiltmeter and your Trade Management graph.

2)What setup and/or instrument performed best for you? And why is that?

What do your winners have in common? Are market conditions favoring your strategy or did you make any changes that lead to greater profits? Try finding what works best and then do more of it.

3) What cost you the most money this week? How can you turn it around?

Were your losses caused by bad trading or did you not listen to what the market told you? Identifying performance killers is a big step towards profitable trading. Every week, try identifying at least one thing that you could have done better and written it down. Over time, you’ll be able to identify negative patterns easily.

4) Did you spend enough time away from your charts working on your trading (e.g. preparation, journaling, review, etc.)?

The myth of screen-time is misleading to many traders. You don’t become a better trader by staring at charts all day long, but only by actively working on your skills and reviewing your performance. How did you spend your time this last trading week? Did you leave enough room for improvement? Did you follow your weekly routine or do you need to make some changes?

5) Would you say that you are serious enough about trading?

Trading is a serious business where effort and discipline are rewarded. The typical approach of the average trader does not reflect this which then causes a high failure rate. Hunting signals, taking excessive risk, changing methods and trying new indicators constantly is as far away from profitable trading as it gets. Step back and take an honest look at yourself.

6) Are you adhering to sound risk management principles?

Often, traders can remain disciplined for a long period of time and then lose all their profits on just one trade. Wrong risk management and not adhering to your stop loss can easily wipe out a large portion of your account. Make sure that no single trade can have a meaningful impact. Also, make sure that you follow a consistent position sizing approach.

7) Did you journal all your trades?

We typically recommend journaling your trades at the end of each day when your memories are still fresh. It’s also much easier to set aside 30 minutes each day than having to journal for 2 hours on the weekend.

Your Friday routine for better trading

Set aside 60 – 90 minutes before you start your weekend and answer those questions honestly. There is no point in sugarcoating failure and a lack of discipline – it will just keep you from making progress. Although it might sound harsh, in the end, no one else but you care about your trading success and you owe it to yourself to use the time and effort you put into trading in the most effective way.

Update: The session tab can now be found in the Trade Process main tab.

Utilizing the “Sessions” feature

The “Sessions” feature in your Edgewonk journal helps you with your weekly Friday review. Simply enter the date of the period you want to analyze (Date From), select the session period and how long you want to look back (Session Duration) and then add personal notes, the lessons that you have learned (or have yet to learn), categorize the lesson of your session and give the session a rating based on how satisfied you are with your trading. Then the Sessions feature also compiles some of your performance metrics.

Again, don’t be too hard on yourself and don’t try to make it all perfect from day one. Creating a routine that works for you takes time. Enjoy the process.

Download: Edgewonk’s PDF Checklist