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The glance back after closing

A trade closes. The next action, almost automatically, is to look at what price did afterward. Did it hit the target? Did it reverse? Was the exit right?

The glance feels like learning. It's mostly a mood generator. If price kept going, there's regret. If it reversed, there's smug relief. Either way, the next decision is colored by a result that has nothing to do with the new setup.

Over time, the habit teaches the wrong lessons. A single post-exit outcome says little about the quality of the decision. Good exits are sometimes followed by continuation, and bad ones by reversal. Randomness dominates.

One possible countermeasure is to switch the chart to a different pair or to a blank view for thirty seconds after each exit. Another is to note the trade in the journal before looking at what happened.

Evaluating exits statistically across many trades answers the question properly.

How often does the chart get checked after an exit, and has it ever changed a rule?

I used to check after every single exit, sometimes for twenty minutes, and I'm fairly sure it made my trading worse. After a few trades that ran on without me, I'd start holding winners longer, and then the next ones would reverse back to break even. I was adjusting rules based on whichever trade I'd watched most recently.

What finally helped was writing the journal entry before I'm allowed to look. Entry, exit, reason, and a one-word grade for how well I followed the plan. By the time I've done that the urge has mostly gone, and if I do look I'm seeing it with a calmer head.

The check did change a rule once, but only because I did it properly. I pulled 120 trades and measured where price went 30 minutes after exit, and found my target was consistently about 3 pips too close on GBPUSD. That was a proper statistical review, not a glance, and it was worth far more than all the glances combined.