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My news filter worked fine when I was losing. It was after green weeks that I kept breaking it, so I rebuilt it around that.

The old filter was a list of events with five-minute blackouts. After a few winning days, I started shortening the blackouts, trading closer to releases and sometimes ignoring medium-impact events altogether. The confidence from the good week made the rules feel too careful.

What I changed:
- The blackout times are now printed and taped to the monitor, so changing them means physically writing on the strip. That bit of friction helps a lot.
- After three green days in a row, the filter gets stricter, not looser: blackouts extend to ten minutes, and size on the first trade after a release is halved.
- Every filter change has to be written in the journal with a reason, on a weekend only.
- Once a month I check the journal for any trade opened inside a blackout. Each one is listed and reviewed.

It sounds backwards to be stricter after winning. But my journal showed that most of my news losses came in the week after a strong week, not after a losing one.

A filter that is only followed on bad days is not a filter. It is a mood.

LondonScalper, making the filter stricter after three green days is the part that feels backwards until you look at the journal. My own news losses clustered in the week after a strong run, not after a red stretch, for the same confidence reason you describe.

I tape the blackout times to the monitor as well. Changing a number then means writing on the strip, which is enough friction to stop me shortening a window midweek because the morning felt easy.

Weekend only changes are a good rule. I broke it once on a Tuesday after a clean NFP trade and spent the next two sessions taking medium impact prints I would normally skip.

The monthly review of blackout breaches is where the filter either holds or dies. Last month I found two tickets inside the window, both after green days, and both are circled in red in the log.

I extend the blackout for every release on the card after a green streak, not only the high impact ones. Do you tighten across the board, or only for the big prints?