On this page
Read, reflect, then practise on demo. Take one useful idea into your next journal entry.
Most trading plans fail a simple test: hand yours to someone else and ask them to take your entries for a week. 'Trade with the trend, wait for confirmation, manage risk properly' could describe any trader alive, which means it describes none of them. It also gives you nothing to hold on to at the moment you need it most, when a red entry has just closed and the next click looks tempting.
Read to the end and you will know the eight sections a working plan contains, how to word a rule so it can be checked rather than interpreted, how to run a four-week demo test that measures whether you follow it, and how to change it without tearing it up every time a week goes badly.
What a trading plan is for
A plan moves decisions away from the moment you are worst at making them. In front of a moving chart you are excited or impatient, and your judgement shows it. The evening before, with nothing open, you are as clear as you will get. The plan is how that evening version of you gives instructions to the one at the screen.
That sets the standard it has to meet. Call it the stranger test. Could someone who has never met you read the plan, sit at your chart and take the same entries, at the same size, with the same stops? Wherever the honest answer is 'it depends', the market will decide what it depends on, and it usually picks whatever suits your mood. A plan that passes is short: one to two pages. If yours runs to ten, most of it is commentary, and commentary does not get followed.
Notice what is missing from the sections below: goals. 'Financial freedom' or 'a second income' tells you nothing about Tuesday's session, and a money goal pushes you to trade when the plan says wait. The plan's only job is the next session.
The eight sections, in order
What goes in a one-page trading plan
When you trade
The days and the exact window you can attend every week without negotiating with work or family. Market sessions run on roughly fixed hours, so convert them to your own clock once and redo it when the clocks change. One window attended every week beats three attended when you remember.
What you trade
One or two named pairs, not 'the majors'. Fewer pairs means more repetitions of the same behaviour on the same instrument. If you choose two, check they do not usually move together, or you will often be holding one idea twice.
Which timeframes
One for context and one for decisions, named. The higher one says what the market is doing; the lower one says whether now is the moment. Without this line you will scroll through six charts until one agrees with you.
The setup, as yes-or-no checks
Every condition that must be true before you enter, each written so it can be answered yes or no at a glance. Four or five checks is typical. If any answer is no, there is no trade, and 'nearly yes' is a no.
Entry, stop and target
Exactly where the order goes, where the stop sits and why, where the target sits and why, all fixed before entry. Say what may happen to the stop while the trade is open. If it can move, say when, and say that it is never widened.
Size
The 1% cap, and the calculation that turns it into lots for a given stop distance. One line is enough, because the arithmetic is identical every time; our forex risk management lesson walks through it.
Limits and no-trade conditions
The number of red entries that ends a session, a weekly limit, and the situations where you do not trade at all: around scheduled high-impact releases if your setup is not built for them, when you are ill or exhausted, or on a day you cannot attend the whole window.
Journal and review
What you record after every decision, including the decisions not to trade, and when you review. A screenshot, the checks you ticked and one sentence on why it worked or why it didn't is plenty. Then a fixed weekly slot to count how closely you followed the other seven sections.
Eight sections fit on a page because each one is a decision, not an essay. If a section needs a paragraph of explanation, keep the explanation in your notes. The plan keeps only the rule.
Write rules you can check, not intentions
Most plans go wrong at the wording. An intention describes how you hope to behave. A rule describes something a second person could verify from your screenshots. The difference only shows under pressure, which is the one time it matters.
| Intention | Rule you can check |
|---|---|
| Only take good setups | Every setup check answered yes and ticked in the journal before the order is placed |
| Trade with the trend | Longs only while the 4-hour chart makes higher highs and higher lows; shorts only on lower highs and lower lows; neither in between |
| Don't overtrade | A maximum of two entries per session |
| Manage risk properly | Every position sized so the stop costs no more than 1% of the demo balance |
| Be patient | No entry until the candle that completes the setup has closed |
| Stop when I'm emotional | Two red entries end the session, whatever I think of the next setup |
| Review regularly | Saturday, thirty minutes: count the entries that matched every line |
The test for each line is whether two people reading it on the same chart reach the same answer. Words like 'strong', 'clean' and 'obvious' fail it, because they are measurements you have not made. Define them, a candle body of at least a set number of pips for example, or delete them. A vague rule is worse than no rule, because breaking it costs nothing and trains you to treat every rule as optional.
Testing that you follow it, on demo
A new plan raises two separate questions, and beginners almost always ask them in the wrong order. The first is whether you can execute it. The second is whether the setup is any good. The second cannot be answered until the first is settled, because a demo record full of entries that broke the plan is a record of a different plan.
So the first month on demo measures adherence. Mark every entry against each section of the plan, and count it as clean only if every line was followed. Log the valid setups you saw and did not take as well, since skipping one is also a deviation. Your adherence rate is clean entries divided by all entries.
Educational example · demo account, illustrative figures
Four weeks of demo sessions, scored line by line
The plan: one window, four evenings a week, two named pairs, a five-check setup, the 1% cap and a two-red-entry session limit. Over four weeks, sixteen sessions are attended and twenty-one entries taken.
Scored against the plan, fifteen entries are clean. Six are not: three were entered before the setup candle closed, two were sized above the cap after a red day, and one was on a pair that is not in the plan. Separately, four valid setups were seen and skipped, all on evenings after a red entry.
The adherence rate is fifteen out of twenty-one, about 71%. That says nothing yet about whether the setup is good, because more than a quarter of the entries belong to a different plan. It does say exactly what to work on.
One change for the next four weeks, aimed at the most frequent deviation: an alert set for the candle close, with the order ticket kept shut until it fires. Everything else stays as written, so next month's count shows whether the fix worked.
An illustration written to teach the scoring, not a record of anyone's trading. The thresholds and counts are examples to adapt.
Set your own bar for adherence in writing before you start. Nine clean entries in ten, for four weeks running, is a sensible one. Until you clear it, the demo results describe your execution. Once you clear it, they finally start describing the setup.
Free masterclass
The structure behind a plan you'll follow, free
The free 40-minute masterclass covers the order to learn forex in, why demo accounts keep working and then failing, and a quick way to judge a strategy before it goes into your plan.
Watch the free webinarChanging the plan without starting again
Plans should change, slowly and on a schedule. The trader who rewrites everything after a bad Thursday ends up with a plan that has never been tested, because no version lived long enough to produce a record.
- Change only at the weekly review. Never mid-session, and never on the evening of a red day.
- Change one line at a time, so the next sample shows what that change did.
- Number and date each version, and keep the old ones. A plan history stops you re-adding a rule you dropped three months ago for good reasons.
- Give each version a minimum sample before judging it, such as twenty entries or four weeks, whichever comes later.
- Separate execution problems from plan problems. Low adherence is an execution problem: drill it rather than rewriting the setup. Only high adherence with a poor demo record over a fair sample justifies changing the setup itself.
- What should a forex trading plan include?
- When you trade, which pairs, which timeframes, the setup written as yes-or-no checks, exact entry, stop and target rules, position size under the 1% cap, daily and weekly limits, and what you journal and review. Each section should be a rule someone else could check from your screenshots. Goals and motivation belong somewhere else.
- How long should a trading plan be?
- One to two pages. Every section should be a decision rather than an explanation, so a page is usually enough for one setup on one or two pairs. A ten-page plan is mostly commentary, and commentary is the part that gets skipped under pressure.
- How do I stick to my trading plan?
- Make every rule checkable, so there is nothing to interpret mid-session, then measure adherence: the share of entries that followed every line. Fix the most frequent deviation first, one change at a time. Adherence improves through counting and small fixes rather than willpower.
- How often should I change my trading plan?
- Rarely, and only at a scheduled weekly review. Change one line at a time, give each version a minimum sample before judging it, and keep dated copies of old versions. If you are not yet following the current plan consistently, the plan is not what needs changing.
- Do I need a trading plan for a demo account?
- Yes. Demo trading without a written plan produces a record of improvisation, which cannot tell you whether a setup works or whether you can execute it. The demo account is where you find out if you follow the plan, before anything is at stake.
What to take away
- A plan passes the stranger test: someone else could read it and take the same entries, at the same size, with the same stops.
- Eight sections on one or two pages: when, what, timeframes, setup checks, entry with stop and target, size, limits, journal and review.
- Write rules a screenshot can verify. 'Strong' and 'clean' need a measurement or deleting.
- Test execution before the setup. Score every demo entry against every line and track your adherence rate.
- Fix the most frequent deviation first, with one change at a time.
- Change the plan only at the weekly review, version it, and give each version a fair sample.
A plan you follow nine times in ten with an ordinary setup will teach you more than a clever plan you follow half the time, because only the first produces a record that means anything. Write it plainly, follow it exactly, and let the weekly count decide what changes, not the week's result.
The honest caveat
Educational content, not financial advice. The plan structure and the scoring example above are a study framework, and every number in them is illustrative. Practise on a demo account first; our programme trades demo. Trading involves significant risk, results are never guaranteed, and every result we publish is an individual outcome shared with permission.
The Traderess coaching team
Written the way we coach — direct, structured, no shortcuts.