You make trades in the moment. Ideally, you’re in a ‘flow’ state and not thinking too much about technical details, and applying your training and reviewing later. Think about professional fighters. They don’t think through each punch and slip during the fight. The thinking is done in their training, and then they review how they applied their training, and what can be changed about the training after the fight. While us traders are sitting at a keyboard clicking buttons and not in a steel cage, we should treat our trading performance with the same respect that high-level athletes and performers do, because our hard-earned money is on the line. And one of the key ways to continually improve and iterate on our trading is to review our past trades and trading performance as a whole. Because you won’t notice the mistakes in the moment. And you can’t take a big picture view when you’re focusing on the micro aspects of each trade. Trading isn’t the time to reflect on your trade setups or to consider changing your stop losses and profit targets. It’s the post-trade analysis, when you’re not in performance-mode, and when your view isn’t colored by the emotions of the trade. For that reason, in this article we’re going to talk about how to review your trades effectively. It’s not enough just to look at your trades and marvel at the greatness of that runner you caught, or repeat some trading psychology quotes when examining your trading mistakes. Just like placing and managing trades, you should have a thought-out process for reviewing trades. .