Building a Trading Plan
How to turn vague intentions into a written, testable plan — and how to test it honestly before it costs you anything.
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A plan you have not written down is not a plan; it is an intention that changes shape under pressure. A plan you have written but never tested is a hypothesis you are funding with real money.
This course covers all three parts: writing rules precise enough to be followed, testing them honestly enough that the test means something, and managing an open position without quietly rewriting the plan while it runs.
What you will learn
- Write entry, exit and invalidation rules specific enough that two people would act identically
- Distinguish backtesting from forward testing and know what each can and cannot establish
- Keep a journal structured around process adherence rather than outcome
- Identify overfitting in your own testing before it reaches live capital
- Explain what adding, reducing and moving a stop to break-even do to expectancy and risk
- Compare trend, mean reversion, breakout and carry structurally, without ranking them
Prerequisites
- Risk Management
Course contents
Module 1 — The plan
What belongs in a written plan, and at what level of detail.
Anatomy of a Trading Plan
A trading plan is a written document specific enough that two people reading it would take the same trades. Anything vaguer is a preference, and preferences change under pressure.
9 min read
Module 2 — Testing and review
Establishing whether the plan is worth following.
Backtesting and Forward Testing
A backtest tells you how a rule would have performed on data you have already seen. That is a much weaker claim than it feels like, and the gap between the two is where most strategies quietly die.
9 min read
Journaling and Metrics
A journal built around profit and loss teaches you to chase outcomes. A journal built around process adherence and a handful of stable metrics teaches you what you are actually doing.
8 min read
Module 3 — Rules you can actually follow
Writing rules that can be checked, managing an open position by schedule rather than by feel, and choosing a strategy family on structure rather than appeal.
Entry and Exit Rules That Can Be Followed
A rule tells you what to do before you know what happens; an intention tells you what you would like to have done. A rule is testable only if it is unambiguous, observable at the moment of decision, and capable of not firing.
8 min read
Position Management and Scaling
Adding, reducing, trailing and partial exits are not neutral adjustments — each one changes your expectancy and your risk in a specific direction. A trade with the stop at break-even is not risk-free; it has simply changed which risks it carries.
9 min read
Strategy Types: A Neutral Overview
Trend following, mean reversion, breakout and carry are four structurally different bets about how markets behave. None of them is inherently more profitable than the others — each has a characteristic cost, a characteristic failure, and a temperament it demands.
9 min read