ForecastingStocks

A trading plan is a written document that defines exactly how you will trade — before a single trade is on. Without one, every decision is made under pressure, in the heat of money moving, which is the worst possible condition for judgement.

What a plan must answer

Markets and style: which pairs, which timeframe, which holding period.
Setup: the precise conditions that constitute a valid trade. If you cannot describe it in a sentence, it is not defined enough.
Entry: the trigger that puts you in.
Exit (loss): where the stop goes, decided before entry.
Exit (profit): the target or the rule for trailing/scaling out.
Risk per trade: a fixed fraction of the account (commonly 0.5–2%).
When NOT to trade: news events, low-liquidity hours, after a daily loss limit is hit.

Why writing it down matters

The plan is a contract with your calm self, to be obeyed by your stressed self. Its real job is to remove in-the-moment decisions — the moments when fear and greed are loudest. A trade either matches the written setup or it does not; that binary is the whole point.

Keep it short

A plan you will not read is useless. One page, in plain language, that you genuinely follow beats a twenty-page document you ignore.