The 60-second after-trade review
Apply a 60-second post-trade review that captures emotion and decisions while they're still fresh.
Lesson path
Market Foundations + Forex Mechanics
Demo Discipline
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Pass the check to unlock nextOpen track mapChange starting pointToday's tiny win: make one idea click.
Apply a 60-second post-trade review that captures emotion and decisions while they're still fresh.
Capture the state while it's still in your body
Memory rewrites itself fast. The trade you just closed will feel different to you in five minutes than it does right now. By tomorrow, you'll have a story about it that doesn't quite match reality. The whole purpose of the 60-second review is to capture the truth before the rewrite kicks in.
The four questions. One: did the setup match my plan? Did I take the pattern I said I would take, or did I improvise? Two: did I size correctly? Did I risk what I planned, or did I bump it up or down at the last second? Three: did I exit where I said I would? Did I hit my stop or target, or did I close early or hold past plan? Four: how did I feel during the trade? Calm. Tense. Bored. Frustrated. Excited. One word, honestly.
Why the speed matters. Within sixty seconds of closing, the emotion is still physically present. Your shoulders are still where they were when you clicked. Your breathing pattern hasn't reset. You can describe what you actually felt because you're still feeling it. Wait five minutes and the body has already moved on, and your description becomes a story about the trade rather than a snapshot of it. Stories are useful for memoirs and useless for performance review.
What to do with the data. Once a week, scan your reviews. You'll start seeing patterns. Maybe your 'tense' trades are losing at 60% while your 'calm' trades are winning at 60%. That's actionable — you now know your emotional state is a leading indicator of trade quality, and you can build rules around it (skip trades when tense, only take trades after a calm review of plan). Patterns like that only show up if the data is honest. Honest only happens at 60 seconds.
One more thing: don't review your equity curve right after the trade. Resist looking at the running balance. The review is about this trade, not about the day. Looking at the equity curve loops you back into outcome thinking — am I up or down, do I need to make this back — and that's the opposite of what the review is for.
Recap: four questions, sixty seconds, written down before the next chart. Process score is separate from outcome score. The honest data only exists in the first minute.
Knowledge check
Answer before moving on.
1. Why do the post-trade review within 60 seconds instead of later?
2. You take a planned setup, size it correctly, exit at your target — and the trade loses. How should the review score it?
3. After a week of post-trade reviews, you notice 'tense' trades lose at 60% while 'calm' trades win at 60%. What's the actionable move?
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