How to Review Your Trading After the Market Closes

It’s a common reaction for many traders to think that when they’ve had a good day that there’s no reason to go over their day’s work. Not true. While it makes obvious sense to look at what went wrong if you’ve had a bad day so that you can learn to not repeat mistakes, reviewing your trades even after a good day is just as important.

Look, if trading is always about getting better, then it makes sense to look at what you did well so that you can see how to improve. This means reviewing your thought processes and your mental state. It means figuring out how you handled a trade and what you could have done better. In other words, whether you performed and executed well or not, you’ll want to review everything you can, such as your trading ideas: are they sound?; your strategy: does it still work?; and your setups: are you sticking with what works best for you?

Here are some things we think you should consider:

Your trading mindset: are you trading on tilt?
Your energy level
Stocks you are trading
Are you trading with the trend?
What time of day are you making the most money or losing money?
Are you churning? When? How?
Are you overtrading?
What are your best/worst setups?
Were you properly prepared for the trading day? (come on, be honest here!)

Yes, that’s a long list, but if you have never reviewed your trading or haven’t done a review with this kind of detail, start small with just a couple of these items. When you get used to it (and start liking what you find) then you can add more and more things. But remember to keep it simple. And don’t forget to keep stats!

If you want to see some replays in great detail, then you’ll want to get Mike Bellafiore’s new book, The PlayBook. In fact, that is the heart of the book: it is chock full of stories that will help you see the importance of reviewing your work. In the meantime, here are some helpful blog posts: