Reason You Haven't Succeeded in Trading Yet !
PSYCHOLOGY
Pre-trade checklists fail for one of two reasons: they are too long to use in the moment, or they are written from generic advice rather than your own mistakes. The fix for both is the same — build the checklist from your journal.
1. Start from your losses
Filter your journal for your largest losing trades and ask a single question of each: what would I have needed to check to avoid this? Write the answers down without editing them.
2. Group and reduce
You will find the same few causes repeating — entering before confirmation, trading outside your session, sizing up after a loss. Merge similar items until you have five or fewer.
3. Make each item binary
"Is the market trending?" invites debate. "Is price above the 20-period average on the higher timeframe?" does not. Every item should be answerable with yes or no in seconds.
4. Record whether you used it
Add a field to your journal for checklist completion. After a few weeks, compare results for trades taken with and without a complete checklist. The data will tell you whether the checklist is working.
A checklist is a hypothesis about what makes a good trade. Your journal is how you test it.