Write the stop before you write the story

After a losing trade, most journals grow eloquent. The candles “failed to respect the level,” the market “was manipulated,” the news “came out of nowhere.” Those sentences may be true, partly true, or comforting fiction. They are almost useless for the next open if the original entry never named where the idea would be wrong.

In our Trade Journal Review sessions we ask to see the stop line as it was written before entry. If the page only shows a stop after the fact, we treat the trade as unplanned — even if it made money. That sounds harsh. It is also the fastest way to stop inventing narrative once the P&L is known.

Try this for a fortnight: the invalidation sentence must be complete before the order ticket is filled. Three words are enough — “below Tuesday low” — as long as they existed in time. Your review then compares structure to structure, not hope to outcome.