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Plan Adherence Review

Read the facts of each closed trade against the plan you wrote beforehand — no verdicts, just what happened.

Unlocked by: Any ITPM course — Core Workbench

Core Workbench — any ITPM course

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Worked example — the numbers below are illustrative.

Example

Example data — two reviewed trades. Link your own closed trades to replace it.

Nothing to review yet

No closed, plan-carded trades yet — the review starts working once your journal has closed trades linked to plan cards. Write a plan before the trade, import your fills when it closes, link the two, and the facts appear here.

Want to see what a review looks like? Use “Load example” above.

Read the facts of each closed trade against the plan you wrote beforehand — no verdicts, just what happened.

Steps

  1. 1

    This review only works on CLOSED trades that are linked to a plan card you wrote before the trade. Journal and link your trades first; retrospective cards are shown but kept out of the rates.

  2. 2

    Start with the summary panel: your entry-adherence rate, how often your actual risk stayed inside your pre-set limit, and how many closed trades could not be reviewed at all.

  3. 3

    Open a trade to read its facts. Each is a plain statement — where your entry sat against your planned range, whether your stop or target level was reached first, how far price ran after you exited.

  4. 4

    Facts tagged “daily-bar estimate” come from end-of-day bars, not tick data. Daily bars cannot see the order of moves inside a single day — where they can’t, the review says so instead of guessing.

  5. 5

    The tool states the facts; it never tells you what to do about them. Reading those facts — deciding what to change — is the judgement the ITPM course develops.

What the numbers mean

entry vs plan

What: Whether your average fill price landed inside the entry range you wrote on the plan card.

How to read it: Read it as a yes/no on execution against your own plan — did you get filled where you intended to?

What it is not: Inside the range is not “a good trade” and outside is not “a bad trade”. It only compares your fill to your written plan.

risk vs limit

What: Your actual risk at entry — quantity × the distance from entry to your planned stop — shown against the risk limit you set beforehand.

How to read it: Use it to see whether the size you actually put on respected the ceiling you pre-committed to.

What it is not: It is measured at entry from your plan’s stop. It is not your realised loss and not a live risk figure.

sequence indeterminate

What: A note that your stop level and your target level both fell inside a single day’s high–low range.

How to read it: Take it at face value: on daily data alone, there is no honest way to know which was touched first intraday.

What it is not: It does NOT mean both were filled, and it is not a way of saying the trade “should” have gone either way. It is the tool declining to guess.

post exit excursion

What: How far price travelled after your exit, in R — multiples of the risk you had planned — from daily bars.

How to read it: A favourable figure says price kept going your way after you left; an adverse figure says it turned. Read both together.

What it is not: A “1.8R after your exit” move does NOT mean you left 1.8R on the table — you could not have sold the exact high, and daily bars ignore the path, spread and slippage. It is context, not a scorecard.

gap through

What: A day that OPENED beyond one of your levels — price jumped past your stop or target at the open rather than trading through it.

How to read it: Useful context for why a fill may have been worse than the level itself: a gap can’t be filled at the level.

What it is not: It is a daily-bar observation, not your actual fill, and says nothing about whether the level was well chosen.

pnl vs planned risk

What: Your realised result on the trade expressed in R — as a multiple of the risk you had planned to take.

How to read it: It puts the outcome on the same scale as your plan: +1R means you made what you had set out to risk.

What it is not: It is a single realised result, not an expectancy or an edge — one trade’s R says nothing about the next.

time horizon

What: How your actual holding period compared with the time horizon you wrote on the plan card.

How to read it: Read it as a plain count of days earlier or later than you intended to be in the trade.

What it is not: Earlier or later is neither right nor wrong on its own — it only reports the difference from your written plan.

entry adherence rate

What: The share of your reviewed trades whose entry landed inside the planned range.

How to read it: A process metric: it tracks how consistently you execute at the prices you plan, not how profitable you are.

What it is not: It excludes retrospective cards and any trade with no planned range. A high rate is discipline, not an edge.

risk within limit rate

What: The share of reviewed trades whose actual entry risk stayed within the limit you pre-set.

How to read it: Read it as how well you kept to your own risk ceiling across the book.

What it is not: It is measured from your plan’s stop at entry, not from realised losses.

risk limit breaches

What: The count of reviewed trades where your actual risk at entry exceeded your pre-set limit.

How to read it: A direct tally of the times size ran past the ceiling you set for yourself.

What it is not: A breach is a fact about size vs your limit — not a claim the trade turned out worse.

retro excluded

What: Trades whose plan card was written after the trade (retrospective) are reviewed but kept out of the rates.

How to read it: They are reported separately so a plan reconstructed with hindsight never flatters your adherence numbers.

What it is not: It is not a judgement on those trades — only honesty that a plan recorded afterwards is not a pre-trade plan.

coverage

What: How many of your closed trades could actually be reviewed, and how many had no linked plan card.

How to read it: Use it to gauge how complete the picture is — the more trades carded beforehand, the fuller the review.

What it is not: Uncarded trades are not counted anywhere in the rates; a low coverage figure just means less to review, not worse trading.