Decision fatigue shows up around trade forty

[Amanhasnoname]

Scalping demands a decision every few minutes. Enter, skip, exit, move the stop, stay out. Each choice draws on the same limited mental fuel, and by the middle of a long session the quality drops.

The signs are subtle. Entries become slightly earlier than the rules say. Setups that would have been skipped in the morning look good enough. Exits get sloppy, and the checklist stops being checked.

Looking at the journal usually confirms it. Win rates and average results often decline in the later part of a session, even when market conditions are similar. The pattern is easier to see when trades are numbered within the day.

A cap on trades per day, or per session, is a blunt but effective answer. So is a hard stop time. Some traders set a maximum of twenty or thirty trades and walk away when it is reached, regardless of how the day looks.

Fewer, better trades tend to beat a long grind of tired ones.

Where does the personal decline start, after a number of trades or after a number of hours?