A one-page plan covering market, timeframe, setup, risk, routine and review — with the sections most traders omit.
Key takeaways
- A plan must specify what you will not trade, not only what you will.
- Include a pre-market checklist and a post-session review in the plan itself.
- One page, revisited monthly, beats a document nobody reads.
A usable trading plan fits on one page. It names the instruments, the timeframe, the exact setup conditions, the risk unit in rupees, the daily stop, the session window and the review cadence. Anything longer becomes an artefact rather than a tool.
The section most people skip is exclusions: what you will not trade. No results-day positions, no instruments outside the list, no new positions after a set time, no trades taken from social media. Exclusions do more work than entries.
Add a pre-market checklist — events today, key levels, current risk unit, yesterday's mistake — and a three-line post-session review. Both take five minutes and convert the plan from a statement into a routine.
Review monthly, and change one rule at a time with a reason written next to it. A plan revised every weekend is a mood diary; a plan revised deliberately is a system improving.
Related guides
Psychology
Overtrading: diagnosing the most expensive habit in retail trading
Boredom, screen time and a need to feel productive produce more losses than bad analysis ever will.
Psychology
A professional daily routine, from pre-market to review
What a working trader's day looks like when it is designed rather than improvised.
Psychology
Why a daily loss limit works even when it feels wrong
The hardest rule to accept is the one that saves the most accounts. What the data says about revenge trading.
Psychology
A trading journal that actually changes behaviour
Most journals record what happened. A useful one records why, and produces one measurable change per week.
Your edge deserves
real capital
Start today from ₹1,499, trade Equity, F&O, Currency or MCX your way, and get paid in rupees on exactly the terms you were shown on day one.
Trade · Prove · Get Funded — evaluation fee refunded with your first INR payout.