Stop learning from wins. Start learning from decisions.
When you are new, a win feels good and a loss feels bad. So you copy the wins and forget the losses. Half of those wins were bad trades that happened to pay, and every one of them teaches you to do it again. Actal grades the decision, not the money, from your first trade.
A loss taken exactly to plan is a good trade. A win that broke your rules is the most expensive trade you will ever take, because you will take it again. Every pro knows this. Most of them needed years to get there. Actal builds it into the journal from day one so you do not need to lose the money first.
The P&L is lying to you, and you have nothing else to look at.
Without a plan written before the open, every winner is luck and every loser is a mystery. You end up copying whatever paid last week.
Chased entry, moved stop, doubled size after a loss. The first time one of those wins, it becomes part of how you trade. Nobody told you it was a mistake, because it made money.
A perfect loss and a sloppy loss look the same on a P&L. So you change the setup instead of fixing the execution, and you start over every month.
Max loss per day, max trades, size. Until they are written down and checked, they are things you say before 09:30 and forget by 10:15.
Write the rules once. Every trade gets checked.
Daily loss limit, max trades, cooldown after a loss, size. From your first import on, every trade is checked against them, and a broken rule is the first thing you see. Stopping at the limit counts as kept.
Three scenarios. Then the market picks one.
A, B and C per market, with a trigger, a plan and where it is wrong. After the close you say which one played out and whether you traded it. Within a month you know how often you go off plan. That number matters more than your win rate.
A to F for how you traded. The money is a separate column.
Every trade gets a grade on execution, with your own setup criteria as a checklist. Tag the mistake if there was one. A losing A and a winning D sit next to each other. After twenty trades you stop mixing them up.
It tells you what to fix. Not fifty things. One.
Insights reads your rules, grades, mistakes and plans, puts rule breaks on top, and gives you one focus for the week with live progress. That is how coaching works, and it is how you get out of the beginner loop.
Your first 30 days
Set your rules and the setups you actually trade. Import every trade you take, sim or live. Do not grade yet, just get them in.
File a plan before the open every day, three scenarios, and close it out after the close. Miss a day and the calendar shows it.
Grade every trade the same day. A to F on execution, tag the mistake. Your grades will disagree with your P&L. Good. That is the point.
Open Insights, take the weekly focus it gives you, and work on that one thing all week. Check the execution score on Friday. Repeat.
Questions from new traders
Learn it now, not in year three.
Every trader who lasts stops caring about single wins and starts caring about execution. The ones who learn it early still have their account when they get there. Free while in beta, no card, everything unlocked.