How to read a daily close

Every trading day gets one post, and every post has the same shape. Once you've read two of them you'll never need to hunt for anything again.

The chart, first

Every close opens with the chart for that session, marked up after the bell. Every signal the rules produced is on it — the entries, the exits, and the ones that failed. Nothing is marked during the session and nothing is removed afterwards. If you want to check a signal against the price action, the chart is there for exactly that.

The table

Under the chart, a table. One row per signal: the time, the direction, the entry level, the exit level, and the result in points. Winners and failures in the same table, in the same format, with a net for the session at the bottom.

Points, not dollars. That's deliberate, and there's a whole post on why.

Working it out for yourself

Then a short block that tells you how to turn those points into a number that means something to you. The point value of one micro contract is published by the exchange. Your commissions, fees and slippage are yours. Multiply, subtract, and that's what the session would have been worth to you at one micro.

It is not what it was worth to me. I don't publish that, and I don't say which signals I took.

The tape

The headlines that ran while the session was open, with the time they broke and a link to the original publisher. This is context, not explanation. The rules don't read the news, and I don't want anyone reading the table as if they do.

Signal by signal

A paragraph on each one. What the rules saw, where the trigger came, what price did next, where the exit fired. If a signal failed, that paragraph says so plainly and says why the rules took it anyway.

Those paragraphs are worth more than the winners. Anyone can write up a trade that worked.

Then an essay

One short piece on whatever the session raised. Something noticed, something got wrong, something every trader believes that the day complicated. One idea per post — two ideas make a worse essay than one.

This is the part worth reading on a session where nothing happened, which over a year is most of them.

What I'd flag

A closing note from the desk. Conditions, a near-miss, a rule that got tested. Two or three sentences.

Then the notices

Every post ends with the same two paragraphs: the hypothetical performance notice, and the reminder that nothing here is advice. They're there because they're required, and because they're true.

That's the shape. Here's a full example with every section laid out. Now go read the record.