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Overtrading is hard to notice from the inside, because every trade seems justified at the time. I use a metric to catch it: trades per day compared with the number of valid setups that my rules identified in advance. During my pre-session prep, I note the number of potential setups I expect, usually zero to three. If I find myself placing more trades than that, something has gone wrong, and I stop to review. I also look at the average time between trades. If I am entering again within minutes of closing the previous one, it suggests emotional trading rather than waiting for the next signal. Another useful check is comparing results of trades taken early in the day with those taken after a loss. Often the post-loss trades are noticeably worse. By tracking these numbers weekly, I can see patterns that I would never feel in the moment. You do not need a complicated system, only a column in your journal that records whether each trade was planned or reactive. The reactive column usually tells you everything you need to know about where your money is leaking.

Time between trades is the stat that caught me. Anything under ten minutes after a loss was almost always a revenge entry when I went back through the log. I added a hard rule: after a stopped trade, no new order for fifteen minutes, enforced with a timer on the desk rather than willpower.

The planned versus reactive column is the one that finally made me see it. I kept that tag for about two months, and the reactive trades made up nearly forty percent of my volume but produced almost all of my net loss. The planned ones on their own were modestly profitable, which was both encouraging and a bit painful to look at.

I also count something slightly different from time between trades. I note how many times I open the order ticket without sending an order. On my bad days that number is often in double figures, which tells me I am hunting for something to do rather than waiting for a setup. When I notice that I am past five of those before lunch, I close the platform for an hour.

The other thing that helped was capping trades per session at four, regardless of how many setups I expected. Most days I do not get near it, but on the days I do, it forces me to stop before the reactive trades start piling up.