Three tags on every trade: session, spread and state of mind

[FXS London Scalper]

Elaborate tagging systems tend to collapse. Three tags can be enough:

• Session: A (Asia), L (London before 12:00), LL (London after 12:00), N (New York).
• Spread at entry: tight, normal, wide. Wide means above 1.5 times your usual for that hour.
• State of mind: calm, rushed, frustrated. Recorded before the trade, not after.

After a few hundred trades, split your results by tag value and look at hit rate and mean R in each group. What tends to be informative:

• Whether "rushed" or "frustrated" trades do clearly worse than "calm" ones.
• Whether wide-spread entries are worse even when the trade works, which shows the cost directly.
• Which session is weakest. Most people know, but numbers make it harder to ignore.

The state-of-mind tag is the uncomfortable one, and that's its value. Having to type "frustrated" before clicking often stops the trade before it happens.

Keep the tags fixed for the whole sample. Changing definitions halfway makes the comparison meaningless.

What tags gave you something useful?