How to Review Losing Trades

To review a losing trade, ask whether you followed your plan, not whether you made money. A loss taken inside your rules is a cost of doing business. A loss from a rule break is a lesson. Review each one on its process and you will see which kind you are having.

Step 1: Sort the loss

• Good loss: valid setup, planned size, stop respected. Nothing to fix.
• Bad loss: the setup was weak, the entry was late, the size was wrong, or the stop moved. Something to fix.
• Mixed: a fine idea with sloppy execution. Name the exact step that slipped.

Step 2: Replay the decision, not the chart

Write down what you knew at the moment of entry. Hindsight makes every loser look obvious, so keep the review anchored to the information you actually had and the plan you had written before the trade.

Step 3: Score it

In Toreda, open a trade from your Trades page and score it there. The scoring form walks through setup, execution, risk, emotional state and process, and lets you mark penalties such as a revenge trade, a stop moved emotionally, an oversized position or an unplanned trade. A numeric score makes a good loss and a bad loss look different at a glance.

Step 4: Look for the pattern

One review teaches little. Fifty reviews show the pattern: the same time of day, the same setup, the same penalty. Your Journal dashboard aggregates your scores so the repeat mistake stands out from the noise.

For the thinking behind this, read Discipline Before Analysis and the Risk Management module.