How to Trade · Phase 2 · Module T7
Build the Plan showed you how to pre-commit to risk responses before entry. This module is what it looks like to follow through — honoring the if-then commitment while in the trade, logging the result after exit, and measuring whether your approach has edge over many trades.
What this module covers
In-trade discipline
Build the Plan taught you to write if-then responses before entry — process commitments made when the answer was obvious, before any emotional stake existed. Section 5 of that plan template contained four examples, each framed as a specific executable action. This module is what it looks like to actually do them.
"If price hits my stop at $4,184.00 → I exit immediately at market. I do not move the stop, add to the position, or reopen the question."
What following through looks like
Price trades at $4,184.00. The stop triggers. You click close at market — no hesitation, no second evaluation of whether the stop was "really" right, no moving it three dollars lower to "give it one more chance." The plan said exit; you exit. The trade is logged as a loss, the size of which you already knew when you wrote the plan. The decision was made in advance. Execution is mechanical.
"If the regime shifts to expansion (daily range >$50 for 3 sessions) → I reassess whether this position size still fits the new structural stop distance."
What following through looks like
You are holding a position sized for a moderate-swing regime. Three consecutive sessions close with ranges above $50. The next morning, before the session opens, you re-run the structural stop method from Stop Design using current price. The new swing low is significantly wider than when you entered. The position is now undersized for the regime. You exit the position, log it, and re-plan if the setup still holds — or you skip the trade entirely if the new stop distance doesn't fit your risk ceiling. You do not hold the position hoping the regime compresses again.
"If my account balance drops below the level where 1% equals the planned dollar risk → I recalculate position size at the new 1% figure before entering any further trades."
What following through looks like
Your account started at $10,000; 1% was $100 per trade. A series of losses has reduced the balance to $9,200. Before the next trade, you recalculate: 1% of $9,200 is $92. That is the new dollar-risk ceiling. You do not keep trading at $100 per trade to "make back" what was lost faster. The risk percentage is fixed; the dollar amount scales with the balance. This is how the compounding protection from Risk First actually works in practice.
"If I feel the urge to check price tick-by-tick or move the stop during the trade → I close the trading platform and return after one hour."
What following through looks like
You find yourself refreshing the chart every two minutes. The urge to tighten the stop or move it further away is present. You recognize this as the symptom the plan named: the position is either too large, or the stop was placed incorrectly, or both. You close the platform. You set a timer for one hour. When the timer goes off, you return and check whether the stop was hit. If it was, the position is closed and you log it. If it wasn't, the trade continues under the original plan. The urge to intervene does not override the commitment; it triggers the pre-planned response.
These are not new rules. They are the same four if-then examples from Build the Plan, shown here with the execution step made explicit. The discipline is not in understanding what the plan says — you already understood it when you wrote it. The discipline is in doing what it says when doing it feels harder than it did when you planned it. That is the gap this section addresses.
Post-trade logging
A trading journal is a record of what you planned, what you did, and what happened. It is not a diary of emotions or a stream-of-consciousness reflection — those may be useful for some traders, but they are not required for the journal to serve its function. What is required is that each trade is logged with enough structure to calculate expectancy over a series, and to identify whether plan violations are recurring.
The template below is one way to structure that record. It captures the minimum necessary information: the planned risk, the structural reasoning, the actual outcome, and whether the plan was followed. You can log this in a spreadsheet, a text file, or dedicated journaling software — the medium does not matter as long as the entries are timestamped and retrievable.
Trade journal entry template
Trade identification
Planned parameters (from the pre-trade plan)
Outcome
Notes (optional)
Swing low held on two prior tests before breaking. Stop placement was structurally correct. No plan violations.
Log every trade — wins, losses, breakevens, and any trade exited early due to a plan violation. The expectancy calculation that follows depends on having a complete record, not a filtered one. If you moved a stop, widened a position, or held past the planned exit, log it and mark it as a plan violation. Those entries are as important as the clean ones, because they show you where discipline broke down and whether that breakdown is recurring.
Measuring edge
Expectancy is the calculation that tells you whether your trading approach makes money over many trades. Risk First introduced it briefly when discussing why correct sizing matters: "average win times win rate, minus average loss times loss rate." If the result is positive, the approach has an edge; if negative, it doesn't. This section shows you how to calculate it from your journal.
Expectancy formula
If the result is positive, the approach makes money over time. If negative, it loses money. If zero, it breaks even before costs.
Worked example — 20-trade series
Trade outcomes (logged from journal)
Calculation
Positive expectancy: this approach makes an average of $29.35 per trade over the series. Net P&L over 20 trades: $1,675 − $1,088 = +$587, which matches 20 × $29.35 ≈ $587.
The worked example above shows a positive-expectancy approach with a win rate below 50%. This is what Risk First described when comparing Trader A and Trader B: the entries can be identical, but if the average win is larger than the average loss, the approach makes money over time even when it loses more often than it wins. The difference is entirely in how losses are kept small and consistent — which is what the sizing formula from Risk First and the structural stop method from Stop Design were built to do.
Expectancy is measured after the fact, over many trades. You cannot know your expectancy before you have a statistically meaningful sample — thirty trades is a starting point; fifty is better; one hundred begins to smooth out the noise. What you control in advance is the process: correct sizing, structural stops, written plans, clean execution. Expectancy is what you discover when you follow that process long enough to generate data. If the number is positive, the approach has edge. If it is negative, something in the process needs to change — the structural method, the regime filter, the risk percentage, or the discipline with which the plan is followed.
The full lifecycle
Phase 2 opened with Risk First: size from risk, not from available margin or instinct. It taught you to place stops structurally in Stop Design, to read volatility regimes in Reading the Regime, to combine those outputs into a written plan in Build the Plan, and to execute and log the results here. That is the full lifecycle: plan, execute, log, measure.
None of this guarantees profit. What it guarantees is that you have a process — one that defines risk before size, commits to responses before emotion, and measures results over time. Whether that process produces positive expectancy is something you will only know after following it consistently across enough trades to generate a meaningful sample. The modules gave you the tools. The edge, if it exists, comes from how you use them.
The path does not end here. Before You Trade and Reading the Chart remain part of the foundation — pre-market orientation and structural vocabulary sit under everything else. But the arc that opened with "how much to trade" closes here, with a method for logging what happened and calculating whether the approach works. If the expectancy is positive, you iterate to improve it. If it is negative, you revisit the process — the sizing, the stop placement, the regime filter, the discipline. The journal is where that feedback loop begins.
Carrying out of T7