The mental game of trading: score execution, not P&L
If money is your only score, every random outcome trains a behaviour. Score what you control and the feedback loop starts working for you.
Why P&L is a bad teacher
A green day rewards whatever you did that day, including the oversizing and the chase. A red day punishes clean execution. On a single-day scale, money is close to noise, and noise is a terrible instructor — it teaches you superstition and makes you distrust the setup precisely when you followed it properly.
The three-item scoreboard
Trigger: the close. Steps: score three things out of two points each — entries taken inside plan, exits taken where written, and size held at plan. Six is a perfect session, and a perfect session can lose money. Duration: ninety seconds. Success test: you have a number for the day that does not move with the market.
What to do with the score
Track the weekly average. Below four, you have an execution problem and you do not raise size no matter what the account says. Five or six for two weeks, raise one rung. This is the whole mental game: a score you control, a rule that ties size to the score, and no decisions made on the basis of a single day's money.
Takeaway — Score execution out of six every close, and size up only when the score earns it — never when the P&L flatters you.
Full protocolThe mental game of trading: a state-first systemThe State-First Checklist — trigger, steps, timing, success test and what to do when it fails.Work it through with the Coach
Describe your last bad trade and it names the state, picks the protocol and gives you the exercise to run before your next session. Free to use.