Building a Trading Plan & Strategy (Long-Term Success)
📍 Step 1: Define Your Trading Style
Scalping – In and out within minutes. Requires lightning-fast decision-making.
Day Trading – Trades last hours but are closed before the day ends. Great for those who want daily action.
Swing Trading – Holding trades for days to weeks, catching bigger moves. Requires patience.
Position Trading – Long-term trading, often based on fundamentals.
➡️ Pick one and stick to it! Constantly switching styles will kill your consistency.
📍 Step 2: Choose Your Trading Framework
Your strategy should be built around one or more of these proven methods:
✅ Price Action – Reading naked charts, using market structure, candlesticks, and key levels.
✅ Smart Money Concepts (SMC) – Order blocks, liquidity zones, break of structure (BOS), and change of character (ChoCH).
✅ Indicators (ONLY If Used Properly) – Moving averages, RSI, MACD—use as confirmation, not the main signal.
✅ Fundamentals & News Trading – Interest rates, economic events, and macroeconomic trends.
➡️ Don’t overload your chart with a million indicators! Less is more.
📍 Step 3: Define Your Entry & Exit Rules
🔹 Entry Triggers – What needs to happen before you enter a trade? Example: Price must break a key level, form a bullish/bearish pattern, or retest an order block.
🔹 Exit Strategy – When do you take profit? Will you scale out or exit fully?
🔹 Stop-Loss Placement – Where do you cut your losses? Below structure? Fixed percentage? ATR-based?
➡️ Your rules should be clear enough that a complete beginner could follow them and still understand when to enter/exit.
📍 Step 4: Backtest Your Strategy Like a Pro
Use TradingView’s replay mode to manually go back and test your strategy on past price action.
Track your trades in a spreadsheet: entry, exit, profit/loss, mistakes, and adjustments.
Look for patterns: Are you winning 60%+ of the time with a good risk-to-reward ratio? If not, tweak the system before going live.
📍 Step 5: Stick to It & Refine Over Time
Most traders quit after a few losses. That’s why they fail.
A solid strategy isn’t perfect—it evolves as you gather data.
Top traders aren’t the ones with no losses, they’re the ones who adapt while sticking to their edge.
🔑 Key Takeaway:
A real strategy is tested, refined, and executed consistently. If you’re just winging it or copying random strategies, you’re screwed. Pick a method, test it, refine it, and stick to it—no excuses.