How many trades a day before quality drops?

[Amanhasnoname]

Most scalpers keep a daily trade count, but few track when the quality of the trades starts to fall. The pattern is familiar: the first handful of trades follow the plan, then somewhere in the middle of the day the criteria loosen, entries come a little earlier, and the setups are a bit more marginal. Nothing dramatic, just drift.

The way to find the personal number is to log a quality tag for every trade, such as whether it matched the written setup fully, partially or not at all, and then plot it against trade order within the day. After a few weeks, a drop-off point usually shows. For some people it is after four trades, for others after the third loss in a row, regardless of count.

A second variable is more important than the count: the interval between trades. Taking a trade within two minutes of the last exit is a strong sign of reactive trading, particularly after a loss.

Practical rules that traders use include a hard cap on trades, a mandatory ten minute pause after a loss, or a stop after a fixed loss in risk units. None of these is universally right. Pick one, apply it for a month and compare the results against the previous month.

Where did the quality line fall in your own journal, by count or by consecutive losses?