![\"\"](\"https:\/\/uabexchange.com\/eu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1070-1-27.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nThree: entry criteria<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
What has to be true for you to open a new position? This includes both the trade thesis and the market context. A thesis-only entry \u2014 “I think this protocol is undervalued” \u2014 is incomplete without context: at what price level, with what position size, with what time horizon. The criteria don’t have to be quantitative, but they have to be specific enough that you can tell after the fact whether they were met.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Four: exit criteria<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
This is the section most traders skip and most regret skipping. Every position needs two pre-defined exits: the price at which the thesis has played out (take profit) and the price at which the thesis has been disproven (stop loss). Both numbers should be set before the position is opened and adjusted only based on new information, not based on emotional response to price movement. A useful rule: if you would not enter the position at the current price, you should be exiting it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maximum position size per trade, maximum total exposure to a single sector or narrative, maximum acceptable drawdown before defensive action (reducing positions, moving to stablecoins, pausing new entries). The risk management section should make explicit what conditions would cause you to step back from the market entirely. New traders almost never set this in advance, which means by the time the conditions are met, they’ve already passed them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When do you review the plan itself? Quarterly is reasonable for most non-professional traders. The review is not for tweaking based on recent performance \u2014 that’s curve-fitting \u2014 but for evaluating whether the plan still matches your objectives, your constraints, and your understanding of the market. A plan you wrote in a bull market and never revised is not the right plan for a bear market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Specific predictions about asset prices. Promises about returns. A long list of contingencies for every possible market state. The plan should be short enough that you can re-read it in five minutes. If it’s longer than two pages, it’s a research document, not a plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The traders who outperform are not the ones with the best analysis. They’re the ones who follow a mediocre plan consistently while everyone around them follows brilliant analyses inconsistently. \u2028The plan is the edge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The single behavioural change that improves new traders’ results the most is also the most boring: writing down a plan before the trade, and following it during. This is not glamorous, and it does not produce screenshots that get attention on social media. But the gap between traders with a written plan and traders without […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":285,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/uabexchange.com\/eu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1070-1-28.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nFive: risk management<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Six: review cadence<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/uabexchange.com\/eu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1070-1-29.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nWhat a plan does not contain<\/h2>\n\n\n\n