The Weekly Trading Review

Daily review is too granular — a single losing day tells you almost nothing about whether your strategy is working. Monthly review is too infrequent — a full month of undiscovered problems is a significant amount of capital and time lost. The weekly review hits the right frequency: enough trades to detect patterns, short enough delay to correct problems before they become habits.

When to Do It

Sunday evening or Monday morning, before the market week begins. This timing matters: you are reviewing the past week from a position of no open trades and no active P&L anxiety. You can assess your performance honestly, without the defensive posture that comes from reviewing while a losing position is still open.

Block 30 minutes. Do not review your journal during a trading session — the real-time market creates noise in your assessment that makes the review less useful. Separation in time produces clearer thinking.

The Three-Part Structure

Part 1: Calculate Your Statistics (10 minutes)

Pull this week's trade data and calculate these four numbers:

Win rate: (Number of winning trades ÷ Total trades) × 100. If you closed 12 trades and 6 were winners, your win rate this week was 50%.

Average winner in R multiples: Add up all the R multiples from winning trades and divide by the number of wins. If your three winning trades returned +2.1R, +1.8R and +1.4R, the average winner was 1.77R.

Average loser in R multiples: Same process for losing trades. Most losing trades should be close to 1R if your stop-losses are working correctly. Averages significantly above 1R indicate stop-losses being moved or trades held beyond the original stop.

Expectancy: The single most important weekly number.

> Expectancy = (Win Rate × Average Winner R) − (Loss Rate × Average Loser R)

Example: 45% win rate, 1.9R average winner, 1.0R average loser:

= (0.45 × 1.9) − (0.55 × 1.0) = 0.855 − 0.55 = +0.305R per trade

On a R500 risk-per-trade (1% of R50,000), this is an average profit of R152.50 per trade. Across 40 trades per month, that is R6,100 per month from a 45% win rate strategy — provided the position sizing is consistent and the review process keeps the numbers honest.

A positive expectancy means your strategy has edge. A negative expectancy means it does not — and no amount of better entries or tighter stops will fix it without addressing the underlying R:R or win rate.

Part 2: Autopsy the Worst Trade (10 minutes)

Identify the worst trade of the week. Not the largest loss in currency terms — the trade where the process broke down most clearly.

Look at this trade carefully:

• What was the rationale? Was it a valid setup?
• Did you follow your rules? (Check the Yes/No field from the entry)
• Was the loss within expected parameters (close to 1R), or did it exceed the planned maximum?
• Could this trade have been avoided — not by being smarter, but by following your pre-trade filters more rigorously?

The goal is not self-criticism. It is identifying whether this was a rule-following loss (acceptable, expected, part of the process) or a rule-violation loss (a process failure that needs correcting). Only the second type requires a change in behaviour.

Part 3: Plan Next Week (10 minutes)

Choose one rule to focus on. Not five. Not a complete trading system overhaul. One specific, observable behaviour to reinforce or correct in the coming week. Examples:

• "I will not enter any trade in the first 15 minutes of London open"
• "I will record my emotional state before every entry, not after"
• "I will not move my stop-loss after entry under any circumstances"

Choosing one thing makes it concrete and measurable. Five things become a vague intention that is forgotten by Tuesday.

Note any high-impact events. Check the economic calendar for the coming week. Are there SARB MPC decisions, NFP releases, or FOMC meetings? Mark these and decide your approach in advance: reduced size on those days, no new entries around the releases, or specific setups that take advantage of post-news volatility. Making this decision before the event, rather than in the moment, removes one source of reactive decision-making.

Red Flags That Require a Trading Break

Some weekly review findings should result in stopping live trading temporarily:

• Win rate below 35% for three consecutive weeks. Either market conditions have shifted outside your strategy's effective range, or execution has degraded significantly. Either requires investigation, not more trading.
• Average loser significantly above 1R. Stop-losses are being moved, or trades are being held beyond original stops. This behaviour compounds losses rapidly and must be identified and stopped immediately.
• Multiple rule violations in one week. More than two "No" entries in the "Did you follow your rules?" field indicates a process breakdown, not a statistical bad luck period.
• Three consecutive losing days. The streak itself is not necessarily alarming — what matters is whether the losses were rule-following or rule-violating. If rule-following: continue with the same process. If rule-violating: stop and review before trading again.

The Compounding Effect

The weekly review does not produce dramatic immediate improvements. What it produces is small, consistent corrections: a slightly better average loser because stop-loss discipline improved; a slightly higher win rate because emotional filter violations were caught early; a marginally better expectancy because the one worst pattern was identified and addressed.

These improvements are small per week. Over six months, they are transformative. The trader who reviews consistently and the trader who trades without review start from the same place; they end in very different positions.

This is general information only, not financial advice. Trading forex and CFDs carries a high level of risk and losses can exceed your initial deposit. Past performance in backtests or paper trading is not indicative of future live trading results.