The monthly review habit

It is the first Saturday of the month, and last month left you feeling you should “fix something”. Without a fixed agenda, that feeling becomes five changes and a new indicator. With one, it becomes a single dated line on your strategy card.

One hour, six steps, every month

In Reviewing your results you read your journal once, to decide whether you were ready for live. The monthly review keeps doing that job for as long as you trade. Book 45–60 minutes on the first weekend of each month, platform shut, and follow the same agenda every time:

1. Numbers: trades, rule adherence, total R, expectancy, largest drawdown.
2. Biggest leak and best habit, from your journal.
3. Risk stage: step up, stay or step down.
4. One change at most, written into your strategy card with the date.
5. One focus for next month.
6. Book the next review.

A fixed agenda makes months comparable and stops the review turning into chart-watching.

Steps 1 and 2: numbers, then the leak

Copy five numbers into the same table each month:

• Trades taken, and rule adherence: the share where you followed every rule.
• Total R. R is the money at risk on one trade, so +5R means five risk units gained.
• Expectancy: total R divided by trades.
• Largest drawdown: the deepest fall from a peak balance.

Then read the groups. Name one biggest leak (the group that cost most) and one best habit (the group that made most). One painful trade is not a leak; a pattern across several trades is. With five or more trades in your trading journal, tap “My journal” to see your own month.

Step 3: check your risk stage

Hold your numbers against the rules from Scaling up safely. Three answers only:

• Step up if the block of trades is complete, with 90% or more rule adherence, the daily loss limit kept and drawdown under 6%.
• Stay if the block is not finished, however good the month felt.
• Step down if drawdown reached 6% from your peak, or you hit the daily loss limit two days in a row.

Trades earn a step. A new month does not.

Steps 4 to 6: one change, one focus, one date

Change one thing at most, as a rule your journal can check: “no new trades after 12:00 UK on Fridays”, not “be more patient”. Write it into your strategy card with the date, and add a line to a version log:

The log shows which rules produced which results. Change two things at once and you never know which one helped.

Then pick one focus for next month, usually the leak as something you can count: “zero Friday-afternoon trades”. Finally, book the next review in your calendar and the card’s “Next review date” box. Unbooked reviews get skipped in the months you need them most.

Try it

Run your review now, or book it for next month, and tick each step as you finish. Ticks are saved in this browser.

Notice how only one step lets you touch your strategy, and it says “at most”: in many months the right change is none at all.

Quick check

Go deeper: How to keep a trading journal · How to write a trading plan · Trading discipline: why rules beat willpower