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Many traders find their later trades of a session worse than the first ones. A rule for the third trade of the morning is worth testing.

How to check whether it applies to you:

• Number your trades per session in the journal: 1st, 2nd, 3rd and later.
• Compute average R and hit rate for each.
• Note the reason for each trade: fresh setup, or "making back" a loss.

If later trades are clearly worse, a possible rule: the third trade is allowed only if the first two were followed by a break of at least 15 minutes and the setup meets every rule on the checklist. Otherwise the session ends.

Why later trades can be worse: fatigue, setups weakening as the session ages, and the pressure to fix the result.

A worked example: with averages of +0.2R, +0.1R and −0.1R for trades 1, 2 and 3, removing the third trade improves total results without any change to entries.

Does your journal show a pattern like this?

I numbered my trades like this last year and the pattern was even starker than your example. My first trades of the morning averaged a little under plus 0.3R, the second were around flat, and anything from the third onwards was clearly negative. When I read the notes on those later trades, most of them said something like "small setup but price was moving" or "want to get back the earlier loss".

The break rule is what fixed it for me. After two trades I have to leave the desk for twenty minutes, actually walk away, not just look at another screen. When I come back I check the third setup against the full checklist, and more often than not I decide it doesn't meet it and close the platform.

One thing I'd add is to look at the time of day as well as the trade number. Some of my third trades were bad simply because they fell into the late morning lull around eleven, when the moves are smaller. Separating the two effects showed me that fatigue and timing were both playing a part.