Strategy Development

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There are many ways to make money in markets. It’s my belief that the one you will be best at is the one that suits your view, time-frame, disposition, financial goals and natural tendencies.

This worksheet is meant to help clarify your strategies goals and intentions as well as your edge. The idea isn’t so much to find massive edge but instead, increase our commitment to the edge we have. This will allow you to get more value from your edge without too much increased stress.

Main primary intention for trading is :

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While trading is important and I want to give it as much effort as possible, I want to protect my :

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Strategy Outline :

Let’s set some structure around this strategy. While your business model may have multiple strategies, it’s my recommendation that you only have one strategy per time frame. This simply means that you have one way of viewing the intraday charts/swing charts/investing charts. A strategy is simply a set of tools and intentions that help us take advantage of opportunities on that time-frame.

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This outline is for my __________ strategy:
(intraday, swing, investment)

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My Trading window is :

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In that window, I trade the following instrument/s:

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I use ____ to take advantage of those opportunities :
(stock, options, futures)

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At the core of this strategy, I am looking to take advantage of the ____ dynamic in markets:
(describe the thing that is happening over and over you want to profit from. Ex, liquidity seeking, theta decay, range probabilities, offsides traders, emotional euphoria)

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My primary time-frame for trading is ___ because it :

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I use the ___ chart to get a sense of the bigger picture :

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I look for ____ to determine when/if I have an edge in my default system :

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By default, my system takes advantage of range or trend? :

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This means that when the market is not aligned with my system I am often :

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I can identify when this is happening by :

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I counter act this lack of default edge by :

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The levels that are important to me are :

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My execution is determined by :

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I work to increased my edge by adding when :

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I know a trade is not working when :

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I know it’s not my day type when :

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There is a higher chance of me making money when :

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Volatility has what effect on this system :

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OPEX has what effect on this system :

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Do you trade holidays :

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System Examples :

Make sure that you include 5 examples of great trades within this system and 5 examples of failed trades inside this system below. You can either add them to the PDF or, include them in a folder with this document. Those chart images should have notes describing the system and how it works.


This should be a living document. You can come back here and revise these answers are you find more ways to get better edge. Through both review and time in the market, you will likely find new ways to increase the effectiveness of this strategy.