News process: after a winning streak
Posted: Mon Oct 05, 2026 5:10 pm
Winning streaks are quieter killers than losing ones on a news desk.
After four clean London sessions I caught myself shortening the blackout into US CPI by five minutes "because things were flowing". The print was in line; the first spike still ran my stop on a ticket I should not have had on. The streak had not improved my read. It had just made the stand-aside rule feel optional.
Process I use now after three green days that included at least one news-adjacent scalp:
- Blackout windows go back to the written maximum, not the shortened version I drift toward when confident.
- Size on the first post-release setup stays at the base unit, even if the week is green.
- I re-read the night-before sheet out loud once before London. Sounds silly. Catches the casual edits.
I still take A+ continuation trades when the map says the event is second-tier and the setup was written before the release. The streak does not ban trading. It bans improvisation. The news process after a winning streak is really a confidence tax: you pay it in slightly slower timing and slightly smaller size so the calendar, not the P&L, stays in charge.
After four clean London sessions I caught myself shortening the blackout into US CPI by five minutes "because things were flowing". The print was in line; the first spike still ran my stop on a ticket I should not have had on. The streak had not improved my read. It had just made the stand-aside rule feel optional.
Process I use now after three green days that included at least one news-adjacent scalp:
- Blackout windows go back to the written maximum, not the shortened version I drift toward when confident.
- Size on the first post-release setup stays at the base unit, even if the week is green.
- I re-read the night-before sheet out loud once before London. Sounds silly. Catches the casual edits.
I still take A+ continuation trades when the map says the event is second-tier and the setup was written before the release. The streak does not ban trading. It bans improvisation. The news process after a winning streak is really a confidence tax: you pay it in slightly slower timing and slightly smaller size so the calendar, not the P&L, stays in charge.