How to develop a Trading Plan : The 5 Key Elements

Hello everyone, today I want to cover a topic that I feel is extremely important to your success, and one that is easily overlooked when beginning a trading career.

One of the major hurdles I've seen for new traders when just getting into the markets is the lack of developing a solid trading plan. It can be unsettling to think about when just getting started. You're being overwhelmed by the terminology, the charting, the indicators and so on. However, the fact is that having a trading plan is a key part to your success as a trader. You cannot be consistently profitable over an extended period of time without one, plain and simple. There's a saying that goes, "You fail to plan, you plan to fail" and that holds truth in any financial market, I cannot begin to stress this enough. If you are considering trading as a full time career this is a MUST!

A trading plan consists of a set of rules and criteria you will use to base trade decisions, these rules and criteria are there to protect you from making rash decisions, and improve your trading by keeping things systematic and disciplined. Think of it as a routine, once you've applied your trading plan time and time again, it will become second nature therefore making the process of a trade easier. There are 5 key elements to a trading plan, and each element should be tailored around what works best for you and your comfort level.

The Elements:

1. Risk tolerance
2. Trading tools
3. Timeframes
4. Entry Criteria (Setups & Trade triggers)
5. Exit Criteria (Setting profit targets & Risk management)

Risk Tolerance -
Risk is something that comes with every trade, you must ask yourself, How much you are willing to let a trade work against you before cutting it off. At the minimum every position you take should offer a 1:1 risk ratio, if you are risking 5% you should be doing so to potentially make a 5% profit. Stop loss/limit orders should be utilized at all times, this one gets overlooked a lot and is a simple practice to protect your capital from further losses beyond your risk levels. To determine your risk tolerance you first need to identify your trading personality, is your objective to be aggressive(High risk), Moderate, or conservative(low risk) there are plenty of questionnaires on the internet that can help you determine risk profile, without an understanding of this element it will be difficult to achieve your trading goals.

Trading Tools -
Trading tools refers to the use of technical indicators and your Charting platform/Software, Technical indicators are tools based on historical data such as volume & price, they are used to help analyze price movements as well as help with entry and exit points, its important that you familiarize yourself with a few indicators that you find work for you, there are thousands to choose from, settle on a few, master them and develop a strategy with them.

Timeframes -
Understanding your timeframes is critical to your trading, you want to tune yourself to the market by looking across multiple timeframes, look at longer ones to analyze the primary trend, and lower ones to plan your entries. For example I tend to use the 4hr for my entries and the daily chart for identifying the primary trend, its important to note that not all timeframes can be used together, if you are trading a 4hr timeframe for example you dont want to be looking at 5min for entry as theres a major gap between the two. Find a primary timeframe that fits your trading style and master it, some of the common frames used together are the Daily/4HR, 4HR/1HR, & 1HR/15min.

Entry Criteria -
This is the most important part of your plan, your entry criteria will be a set of standards the asset you are looking to trade must meet before entering a position. Typically your criteria can be based around your technical strategy.

For Example
Price close above EMA
MACD must be crossing to the upside
higher highs and higher lows

if the underlying doesn't meet those requirements then you wont take the trade.

Exit Criteria -
The key to locking in profits, your exit criteria will be very similar to your entry , if one of the requirements is violated you take your profits and dont look back.

For Example
Price Close below EMA
lower highs and lower lows

The example below shows a basic moving average strategy using the entry criteria : A close above ema, and the exit criteria: A close below ema

Entry was taken when price close above the moving average with a stop loss below, once the asset closed below the moving average the trade was closed with 57% gain using this basic criteria.

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Developing a sound plan and strategy is critical for being a successful trader, I hope this write up helped give you better general understanding of the components and importance of doing so.
if it did drop a like, and if there was anything I missed feel free to let me know in the comments, and thank you for taking the time to read my first article :)