# Trade Review

> A trade review is how you look back at closed trades to judge execution and strategy separately. See what to check, how often, and how many trades it takes.

Canonical: https://www.journalx.io/glossary/trade-review

A **trade review** is the habit of going back over closed trades to learn from them. Done well, it answers two different questions and keeps them apart: did I trade my plan, and is my plan any good? Most of the skill in reviewing is knowing which question a given review can answer.

Rereading charts and replaying the day is not a review on its own. A review compares what happened with a written record of what you intended and turns the difference into something you will do differently.

## Types of Trade Review

Reviews come at different intervals, and each one is suited to a different decision.

| Review       | When                              | Time             | Question it answers                    | What it can change                    |
| ------------ | --------------------------------- | ---------------- | -------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------- |
| Single trade | Right after the trade closes      | 1 to 2 minutes   | Did I follow the plan?                 | Nothing yet; it records the facts     |
| Daily        | End of the session                | About 5 minutes  | Did I keep my rules and limits today?  | Tomorrow's focus                      |
| Weekly       | Once a week, outside market hours | 20 to 30 minutes | Where did execution cost me, by setup? | One habit for next week               |
| Monthly      | Month end                         | 45 to 60 minutes | Is each setup's edge holding up?       | Risk, the setup list, the plan itself |

The [weekly trade review process](/guides/the-weekly-trade-review-process) walks through the weekly session step by step, and the [monthly trading review](/guides/monthly-trading-review) covers the month-end one, where strategy changes belong.

## How a Trade Review Works

Every review, from a single trade to a quarter, runs the same sequence on a different number of trades.

1. **Compare the plan with the result.** Put the [pre-trade plan](/glossary/pre-trade-plan) (entry, stop, target, size) next to the actual fills. Work out both results as [R-multiples](/glossary/r-multiple) so a $40 stock and a futures contract read the same way.
2. **Grade the process before the outcome.** Was each rule followed? Answer this before you look at the profit or loss, so the result can't color the grade.
3. **Tag what went wrong.** Name the specific action: moved the stop, chased the entry, exited before the target. Our guide on [how to tag trades](/guides/how-to-tag-trades) covers how to keep those tags consistent enough to count.
4. **Check what the market offered.** [Maximum favorable excursion](/glossary/maximum-favorable-excursion) shows how far price ran in your favor, and [maximum adverse excursion](/glossary/maximum-adverse-excursion) shows how close it came to your stop. Both help judge exits and stops from data instead of memory.
5. **Write one line.** What would you repeat, and what would you change? One sentence is enough. A review that produces no written output tends to be forgotten by the next session.

Steps 1 to 3 judge execution, and they work on a single trade. Step 5 only becomes a strategy decision when it rests on many trades.

## What One Review Can and Can't Judge

A single trade tells you almost nothing about whether a setup has an edge, because any one result is mostly noise. The chart below shows why. It takes a setup with a real [expectancy](/glossary/expectancy) of +0.25R per trade, where individual results vary with a standard deviation of 1.2R, and shows the 95% range around the measured average (1.96 × 1.2R ÷ √trades) at different sample sizes.

![The 95% range around a measured expectancy of +0.25R per trade shrinks from ±1.05R after 5 trades to ±0.53R after 20, ±0.33R after 50, ±0.24R after 100 and ±0.17R after 200, and only stays clear of breakeven from about 100 trades](https://assets.journalx.io/marketing/glossary/trade-review/what-a-review-can-judge.avif)

After 5 trades, the measured average could land anywhere from −0.80R to +1.30R. After 20 trades, a week or two for an active day trader, it could still be −0.28R. Only at around 100 trades does the whole range sit above zero. A trader who judges this setup after one bad week could easily drop a setup that works.

That is why the reviews are split the way they are. Daily and weekly reviews are for execution, which you can see in a single trade. Monthly and quarterly reviews are for strategy, which needs the sample. Our post on [how many trades you need to judge a strategy](/blog/how-many-trades-to-evaluate-a-strategy) has the formula for working out the sample size for your own numbers.

A moved stop is visible in one trade. A setup that stopped working is not. Check your execution every day, and change the strategy only when a large enough sample says so.

## Judge the Decision, Not the Result

The hardest part of a trade review is grading a trade on the decision instead of the outcome. In a 1988 study, Jonathan Baron and John Hershey gave people descriptions of decisions, such as a doctor's choice to operate, with the same information available to the decision maker in each case. People who were told the outcome was good [rated the decision as better](https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.54.4.569) than people told it was bad. The authors called this outcome bias.

Trade reviews are exposed to the same bias. A trade that broke two rules and made money feels like a good trade, and a trade that followed every rule and hit its stop feels like a mistake. Grading process first, from a written plan, is the fix. A rule break that won still goes down as a rule break. A planned loss goes down as the plan working.

## Key Takeaways

- A trade review answers two separate questions: was the trade executed as planned, and is the setup working?
- A single trade can judge execution. Judging a setup takes a sample, often around 100 trades for a modest edge.
- Grade whether rules were followed before looking at the result, so outcome bias doesn't rewrite the grade.
- Each review interval has its own job: daily for rules and limits, weekly for execution habits, monthly for strategy and risk.
- Every review should end with something written: one change, one tag, or one line.

## Common Mistakes

**Reviewing only the losers.** Winners that broke rules are where bad habits get rewarded. Review every trade, including the ones you'd rather forget and the ones you're proud of.

**Changing the strategy after a bad week.** One week is usually too few trades to judge a setup. Use the weekly review to fix execution and save strategy changes for the monthly one.

**Reviewing without a plan to compare against.** If the plan wasn't written before the trade, the review can only describe what happened, not measure how far it drifted.

**Reviewing while still emotional.** Right after a big loss is a bad time to judge a strategy. Record the facts after each trade and leave the judgment for a scheduled session.

**Ending without a decision.** A review that produces no change, tag or note is just a replay. Write down the one thing you will do differently, then check next time whether you did it.

## How JournalX Supports Trade Review

JournalX keeps the pieces a trade review needs in one place. Pre-trade planning records the plan before entry, broker sync or import brings in the fills, and each trade shows planned R next to actual R. You can mark rules from your Gameplan as followed or broken, tag mistakes, attach notes, and then use filters to read the same trades as a group by setup, session or rule break when it's time for the weekly or monthly review. Our guide on [how to analyze your trading performance](/guides/how-to-analyze-your-trading-performance) shows which numbers to read first once the trades are in.