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A monthly target of, say, plus 8R seems modest. It can still be a bad idea, and your journal can show whether it's hurting you.

What to check, month by month:

• In months when you were behind target going into the last week, did trade count in that week rise?
• What was the win rate and average R of those extra trades?
• Did any month that would have ended slightly positive end negative?
• In months where you hit the target early, did trade quality drop because "it's a free month now"?

The logic is simple. The market doesn't care about your calendar. A month with few setups is a month with few trades, and forcing trades to fill the gap only adds negative-expectancy trades. Hitting the target early creates the opposite problem: looser standards with house money.

An alternative is process targets instead of results targets: rule breaks per week, share of A-quality trades, execution errors. These are under your control, and improving them tends to improve results without the end-of-month pressure.

Does anyone still use money or R targets? How do you stop them from changing how you trade?