What to log: a tag in the journal for days traded while ill, plus your execution errors on those days: wrong lot size, stop on the wrong side, late entries, missed exits. Compare against your normal error rate and the share of negative days.
Why it's worth doing: the strategy doesn't change when you're ill, so any difference is about you, not the market. And impairment is often not felt in the moment. Many people only notice in the logs that their error rate went up.
A hypothetical to show the scale: if you normally have 40% negative days and a 2% error rate per trade, and on 11 sick days you see 8 negative days and errors at three times the usual rate, the cost of trading those days is likely larger than the cost of skipping them.
Simple rules people use:
- If medicine is needed to get through the morning, no trading.
- If just a bit off, half size and only the two best setups.
