Write Your One-Page Plan

Paper trading without written rules is just clicking. Before your first real session on the route, write one page. You'll follow it for all 30 sessions without changing it.

The template

1. Market and chart: MNQ on a 5-minute chart, or for stocks, your watchlist and how you pick from it each morning (lessons 3 to 7).
2. When I trade: your window, with a hard stop time. For example, the New York open to 11:00 a.m. Eastern.
3. My setup: one setup, described in two or three sentences, specific enough that someone else could spot it. One setup beats twelve.
4. Where the stop goes: at the price that proves the idea wrong, set before entry, never moved further away. See stop losses.
5. Size: one micro contract, or a fixed number of shares. Same size every session.
6. Daily loss limit: the number of points at which you stop for the day.
7. Maximum trades: two or three. When you hit it, you're done.
8. When I don't trade: major news releases, after two losses in a row, when you're tired or angry.

The full version with examples is in how to build a trading plan.

The test

Read your plan out loud. If any line needs interpreting in the moment, rewrite it until it doesn't.

Your task

Write your one-page plan and keep it next to your screen for every session. Then go to lesson 10.