Losing Week Review¶

OVERVIEW¶

Most traders review a losing week by re-reading the chats they were on during the bad trades, calling themselves names, and promising to be more disciplined. That's not a review. That's an emotional ritual that runs after the bad week and produces no actionable change before the next one starts.

The losing week review workflow in Tapeboard separates trade losses into three distinct failure categories — setup failure, execution failure, and variance — and produces a single enforceable adjustment before the next trading week begins. Conflating these categories leads to incorrect fixes: changing setups when the problem was behavior, tightening execution when the problem was statistical noise, or blaming variance when a setup is structurally broken.

Note

This workflow requires tagged trades. Without setup tags, time-of-day tags, and outcome tags on every trade, Steps 3 and 4 cannot be completed accurately.

FEATURES¶

Feature	Description
Three-bucket classification	Sorts every losing trade into setup failure, execution failure, or variance
Tag-based loss isolation	Filters weekly losses by setup name and time-of-day bucket to surface outsized bleed sources
Single-adjustment output	Enforces one narrowly scoped binary rule per review cycle rather than a list of changes
Journal audit trail	Stores the adjustment with start date and review date in the weekly journal entry using `Y-W` date format
Auto-log integration	Tapeboard paper-sim fills capture tags automatically; live trades are tagged at the journal-entry step

HOW TO USE¶

Step 1 — Classify every losing trade¶

Assign each losing trade from the week to exactly one of the following buckets:

Bucket	Definition	Required Action
Setup failure	Trade matched written criteria; the setup signal itself failed	Review setup over 50–100 trades before making any change
Execution failure	Setup was valid; trader deviated from the plan	Identify the specific behavioral breach and apply a behavioral fix
Variance	Setup matched, execution was clean, loss was at or under −1R	No action required — leave it alone

Tip

Default bias runs in two directions: traders call uncomfortable losses "variance" to avoid examination, and call emotional losses "setup failure" to blame the market. Neither is usually accurate. Classify against written criteria, not memory.

Step 2 — Tag every trade¶

Each trade requires a minimum of three tags before analysis is possible:

Setup name — breakout, pullback, vwap-reclaim, or your own taxonomy
Time-of-day bucket — open, mid-morning, lunch, power-hour
Outcome bucket — winner, -1R, worse-than--1R, scratch

Note

The Tapeboard journal auto-log applies all three tags automatically on every paper-sim fill. For live trades, tags are applied at the journal-entry step. If building a tag taxonomy from scratch, refer to the Setup Tagging 101 guide before proceeding.

Step 3 — Isolate the tags that generated the most losses¶

Sort the week's losses by tag and check for concentration:

By setup tag:

If one setup tag accounts for ≥ 60% of weekly losses, place that setup on probation
Pull the last 50–100 trades for that tag and check average R
If average R is positive over the longer window → bad week for a working setup; make no changes
If average R is negative over the longer window → setup has been broken longer than one week; review the setup criteria

By time-of-day bucket:

If one time-of-day bucket accounts for ≥ 60% of weekly losses, the failure mode is time-specific
The fix is a behavioral rule against that window, not a setup change

Step 4 — Commit to one adjustment¶

Select one adjustment only. A list of multiple simultaneous changes produces zero implemented changes.

The adjustment must be enforceable as a binary yes/no rule at the moment of trading:

Example Rule	Type
No trades between 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM ET for two weeks	Time-of-day restriction
No size above 1% of account on breakout setups until tag average R is positive over last 30 trades	Size cap
No stop movement after entry — bracket orders only	Execution constraint
Skip all pre-10:00 AM entry signals for the next week	Session filter

Tip

Resolutions such as "be more disciplined" or "trust the system more" are not adjustments. They are not enforceable at the moment of a trade decision and will not produce measurable change.

Step 5 — Journal the adjustment for future auditing¶

Open the trade journal and add a markdown note to the current week's entry containing:

The exact text of the adjustment rule
The date it takes effect
The date it will be reviewed

Use Y-W date format (year-week) for all entries so weekly reviews chain together and can be audited sequentially.

Note

Without this step, the adjustment will be forgotten after the first sequence of winning trades. The journal entry creates an external commitment that survives favorable market conditions.

KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS¶

Action	Shortcut
Open weekly journal entry	`Shift + J`
Add markdown note to current week	`Ctrl + M`
Filter trade log by tag	`Ctrl + F`
Open tag editor on selected trade	`T`
Navigate to previous week's review	`[`
Navigate to next week's review	`]`