forex-scalping.com

It is nearly the end of the session. The daily target is reached, or the day is a small loser. A setup appears. It looks decent.

Then comes the thought: one more trade.

Statistically, the last trade of a session tends to be a weak one. Energy is lower, focus has drifted and the trader is either protecting a win or trying to erase a loss. Neither motive produces a good entry.

Some traders keep records of last-trade performance. Others set a hard stop time and close the platform the moment it arrives. A few use a trade-count limit, such as eight trades, after which the platform locks itself through a script or simply gets shut down.

The reward for stopping is a clean day. The reward for continuing is usually small, with a fat tail of regret.

An honest test: calculate the combined result of every trade taken after the planned stop time over the last three months.

What does that number look like here?

I ran exactly that test last spring and it was uncomfortable. Over roughly eleven weeks I'd taken 38 trades after my planned finish, and as a group they gave back a bit more than a full good day. The win rate wasn't even terrible, around 45 percent, but the losers were bigger because I was sloppier with stops when tired.

What fixed it for me wasn't willpower. I set a phone alarm for twenty minutes before my stop time, and once it goes off I'm only allowed to manage open positions, not open new ones. That gap matters because the urge usually showed up right at the end, when I'd look at the day's figure and want to round it up or claw it back.

I also started writing the reason in the journal whenever I broke the rule anyway. Nearly every entry said some version of "chart looked clean", which is funny, because a tired brain thinks every chart looks clean. Seeing that line repeat twenty times did more than any rule.