Twenty sessions, one page, one change

A monthly trading review looks at about twenty sessions together and asks what repeated. That is the whole job. Weekly reviews are good at single trades and single bad days. They are poor at spotting a pattern that needs four weeks to appear.

Take a trader who loses on two Mondays in a row. In each weekly review, that's one red day with a story attached. Over a month it's four Mondays out of four, and the stories stop mattering.

The same goes for the day after a big win, or the sessions around options expiry. One instance looks like noise. Four instances look like a habit.

The risk is turning the monthly review into a longer weekly review. Reread every trade and you'll drown in detail and leave with ten resolutions. Keep this one at the level of days and trends, and keep it to five questions.

Answer these five questions in order, in writing, before you look at anything else.

One: what shape does the calendar have? Look for a weekday that keeps losing, or trouble around FOMC and expiry days.

Two: how much of the month came from the best day? And did the worst day stay inside your daily loss limit?

Three: did your pre-session routine get better or worse across the month? Did the red days line up with the skipped mornings?

Four: which habit showed up most often? Two to check first: fast re-entries after a loss, and size jumping after a red trade.

Five: what is the one change for next month? Write one sentence, specific enough that you can check it on any given day.

Run this arithmetic on your own month. It needs two numbers from the calendar and your loss limit.

Say the month finished up 1,200 dollars across 20 sessions. The best day made 900, which is 75 percent of the month. The other nineteen sessions netted 300, or about 16 dollars a day.

Now the worst day. Say your daily loss limit is 400 and the worst day lost 650. That one session cost 250 more than you'd agreed to risk.

Neither number is good or bad alone. A month carried by one day says the other nineteen need a look. A worst day past the limit says the limit isn't real yet.

Your checklist adherence is the most honest number in the month. It measures only what you did before the open.

Put the month's daily checklist scores beside the calendar. Then split the days into two piles: full routine and skipped steps. Compare the average result of each pile. Twenty sessions won't prove anything, but a wide gap is worth a sentence in your notes.

Watch the direction too. If your score started the month high and slid by the third week, the fix is rarely a new setup. It's usually a shorter routine you'll still do on a tired Thursday.

The weekday split works the same way. If one day keeps losing, trade it at half size next month and compare.

End the review with exactly one change. With two changes running at once, you won't know which one did the work.

Make it a behaviour you can check at the close with a yes or no. "No new trade within ten minutes of a stop-out" works. "Be more patient" doesn't, because no day can fail it.

Write the change at the top of next month's first journal entry. Then add one line to each day's entry: did I keep it? At the next monthly review, count the yes days and compare their results with the no days.

If the change helped, keep it and pick a new one. If it made no difference after a full month, drop it and try another.

Block 30 minutes on the first weekend of the month. Use this list as your template and answer each step in writing. Do the arithmetic before you form opinions, and keep the weekly reviews closed until step nine.