Reading the market with the terminal · With the terminalLesson 12 of 12

From reading to plan: writing the trade down before taking it

A reading becomes a trade only when it is written down: where you get in, where you are wrong, how much you risk and what would cancel it. Then the outcome — even a loss — can be judged on the plan, not the result.

You will learn

The lines of a written plan, and the order to fill them in
How the terminal's readings feed each line
How to record a loss that followed the plan

Before you start: The Your plan module, and the other lessons of this track.

The situation

A market is rising on the daily and 4-hour charts and dipping on the hourly. The dip is heading into a zone where several references meet. This lesson does not read the situation in one go: it writes the plan a line at a time, and only then looks at what happened.

From reading to plan — a modelled hourly market on the terminal's chart. Context: rising on the higher timeframes, the hourly dip a pullback. Setup: a support zone where the anchored VWAP, the Asia low and the previous day's low meet. Trigger: a candle sweeps the zone's low on heavy volume and closes back inside. Entry, stop and target from If you enter now — whose first target at the market is closer than the stop, so the plan takes the panel's own limit entry at about 1.8R. Size from 1% of risk, and what cancels the order. In the model the limit fills, the zone gives way and the stop is hit: a loss of exactly the planned size, recorded as a trade done right.

The plan, line by line

The same seven lines work for any trade. Here is each one, and where in the terminal its answer comes from:

Line of the plan	Where the answer comes from
Market and timeframe	your choice — and the timeframes strip for the trend above it
Context	Now and Timeframes: a trend, a pullback, or a conflict
Setup	Key levels, the volume profile, SMC zones: a place
Trigger	the candle, Recent events and the CVD badge at that place: a reason
Entry and stop	If you enter now: at the market, or the better entry it suggests; the stop beyond the zone, at least 0.75 ATR
Target and R	If you enter now: the next level, and its R
Size	If you enter now: your account and risk % (or risk ÷ distance to the stop)
Cancelled if	your own rule: the target reached before the fill, or a close against the setup first

After the trade

Record the result in R and whether you followed every line. Here the answer is "−1R, yes". Over many trades the journal shows whether the plan works — and the trades where you broke it, which are usually the expensive ones.

Takeaways

Fill the plan in order: context, setup, trigger, stop, target, size, what cancels it.
Each line has a source in the terminal; the decision stays yours.
A loss of the planned size is a trade done right.
Judge the plan on many trades and each trade on the plan.

Open BTC in the terminal and write a plan for the chart in front of you