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Troubleshooting, Why Do I Keep Losing on Fridays?

You may notice that your worst results come on Fridays. Before blaming the market, look at the possible causes.

Market-related causes:

- Liquidity fades late in the week
- Reversals and profit-taking can trap trend traders
- Weekend risk makes some participants close positions, creating erratic moves

Personal causes:

- Fatigue after a long week
- Impatience to finish the week in profit
- Trying to recover earlier losses
- Looser discipline because the weekend is near
- Holding trades without a weekend plan

How to investigate:

1. Filter your journal by day of the week and compare average R.
2. Check rule-following percentage on Fridays versus other days.
3. Look at the time of day of your Friday losses.
4. Note your emotional state in Friday entries.

Possible solutions:

- Reduce size on Fridays
- Stop trading after the London session
- Trade only A+ setups on Fridays
- Skip Fridays entirely and use the time for review
- Add a mid-week check on your energy and results

Many traders discover that their Friday losses come mostly from behavior rather than market conditions.

If the data shows Fridays are consistently negative for you, giving yourself permission to rest costs nothing.

Let your own numbers guide the rule.

Quick thing to check in your own journal: split Friday trades by time of day. In my case the damage was nearly all after the London close. Mornings were fine. Once I saw that, the fix was just to stop earlier, not stop Fridays entirely. For us in Lagos, London closes around 4pm or 5pm depending on the season, and the New York afternoon after that tends to get thin on Fridays. Also look at what you were trying to do with those trades. If most of them were attempts to finish the week green after a losing Thursday, the problem isn't Friday, it's the pressure you brought into it. A weekly loss limit helps there.

Friday has one market cause you didn't list, and it's specific to the first week of the month: US payrolls. On NFP Fridays the whole afternoon, from a London point of view, revolves around 13:30, and the morning is often a slow drift with positions being squared ahead of it. Someone trading their normal London setup into that drift can collect small losses before the release even arrives.

When filtering the journal by weekday, I'd split payroll Fridays from the other Fridays. If the losses mostly come from the NFP ones, the fix is narrower than skipping Fridays entirely. It might just mean no new trades after midday on those days, or trading only the release itself with a separate plan.

Worth checking whether it's you or the market, too. If your Friday losses mostly come from trades you'd normally skip, it's probably end-of-week fatigue and the urge to finish green. That's a rule fix, not a strategy fix. Filter your journal by day and look at the Friday trades separately: rule-following percentage, time of entry and setup grade. If most losses came after about 5pm Lagos when liquidity thins, a simple rule like no new trades on Friday after London closes may solve it. If the trades were clean and still lost, compare with Friday results in your backtest.