Tips & Secrets — DocTrader

The one secret: there isn't one. There's a routine, a set of rules I follow when I'd rather not, and a journal that tells me when I didn't. Everything below is a detail of those three things.

The pre-market routine (30 minutes)

Every trading day, before I write the Morning Update:

Futures and overnight (5 min). ES/NQ, Asia and Europe closes, the dollar, yields, oil. I'm looking for one thing: is today likely to be a normal day or a headline day?
Calendar (5 min). Economic prints and their times, earnings before the open and after the close, Fed speakers. Anything that can gap a position I hold gets a note.
Levels (10 min). SPY, QQQ, IWM and anything I hold or plan to trade: yesterday's high/low, the prior week's high/low, and the 20/50/200-day. I write the ones that matter into the update.
Watchlist pass (10 min). Sixty seconds per name on the dashboard. Anything at a level or with news gets flagged.

Then the update gets written, and then — this is the important part — I usually close the charts until the first 30 minutes are over.

Watchlist discipline

One sentence of “why.” If I can't say why a name is on the list in one sentence, it isn't ready to be on the list.
Something to watch for. A level, an event, a pattern — something observable that would make me act. “Looks interesting” isn't a plan.
A review date. Every name expires. Renewing it means re-writing the “why,” not just leaving it there.
Cap of ~20. Past that I'm not watching, I'm collecting.
Earnings dates on every name. Nothing surprises me on a report day because I already knew it was a report day.

Sizing & risk

The single sentence that runs the whole account: decide the dollar loss I can shrug off, put the stop where the idea is wrong, and let those two numbers set the size.

shares = risk dollars ÷ (entry − stop)

Example: I'm willing to lose $500 on an idea. Entry $50, the idea is wrong below $46 — $4 of risk per share, so 125 shares, about $6,250 of exposure. Not “how much do I want to own,” but “how much can I own given where I'm wrong.”

Risk per idea is a fixed, small fraction of the account — small enough that ten losers in a row is a bad month, not a bad year.
Correlated ideas share one risk budget. Three semis positions are one position.
Earnings holds get half size or zero. A stop can't protect you from a gap.
Leverage is a size decision, not a conviction decision. If I want more exposure, the sizing formula has to allow it first.

Entries

The plan is written before the order. Entry, wrong-at (stop), right-at (where I'll take some off), time stop, size. Five lines. No plan, no trade.
I buy at levels, not at feelings. A pullback to a level I wrote down that morning is an entry. A green candle that's “running away” is not.
The first 30 minutes are for watching. Most of my worst fills happened between 6:30 and 7:00 a.m. Pacific.
Scale in only if the plan said so. Adding to a loser because it's “cheaper now” is a new trade with no plan.

Exits

The stop is where the thesis is broken, not a round number and not where it would hurt. If I can't name that price, I don't have a trade.
I'm allowed to exit earlier than the plan. Never later. Moving a stop down has never once worked out for me, so it isn't on the menu.
Take some at the first target. Paying myself makes holding the rest easy. Holding everything for the home run makes me sell the whole thing on the first dip.
Time stops are real stops. If it hasn't done anything in N weeks, it's using up attention I could spend elsewhere.

Earnings season

Know the date. It's on the dashboard tile for a reason.
Decide before the week starts whether I'm holding through, cutting to half, or flat. Deciding the afternoon of the report is deciding under stress.
The reaction matters more than the number. A beat that sells off tells me more than the beat did. I trade the second day more than the first.
Implied move is the honest number. If the options market says ±8% and my stop is 3% away, I don't have a stop, I have a hope.

The head game

Every trade gets graded on process, not P&L. Followed the plan and lost: good trade. Broke the plan and won: bad trade that got paid.
After two losses in a day, I'm done for the day. The third one is almost always revenge.
Size down when I notice I'm checking the position more than the market. That feeling is information.
Cash is a position. Some of my best months were mostly waiting.
Sunday review, no exceptions. The week's journal entries, the watchlist pass, and the plan for a boring week — written down, because “do nothing” is the plan I'm most likely to abandon by Tuesday.

Mistakes I've paid for

The mistake	What it cost	The rule it created
Moving a stop lower “just this once”	A small loss became the biggest of the year	Exit earlier than the plan, never later
Full size into an earnings report	A gap through the stop	Half size or flat through earnings
Chasing the open	Bought the high of the day, twice, same week	First 30 minutes are for watching
Three “different” tech names at once	One sector selloff, three stops in a day	Correlated ideas share one risk budget
No journal for a month	Made the same mistake four times without noticing	Every trade gets the five fields, same day

Tools

Charts: TradingView — which is also what powers the dashboard here.
Journal: a spreadsheet with five columns: setup, plan, what happened, did I follow the plan, rule change.
Watchlist: the same file that drives this site. One source of truth.
Calendar: earnings and economic dates go straight into my phone calendar with a morning-of reminder.

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