A Broken Rule Against a Rule That Was Never Written

That sinking recognition partway through a session, when a position is already on and nothing in the plan describes the situation, is a different feeling from knowing you have broken a rule. The figures kept at orb trading review consultoriainnova separate the two because they need opposite remedies, since a strategy for the opening range accumulates uncovered cases as quietly as it accumulates violations, and a review that files them together will prescribe more discipline for a problem that is missing a rule.

Two Failures That Log the Same Way

In the trade journal both appear as an entry that did not follow the plan. The distinction lies in whether the plan had anything to say. A trader who ignored a stated filter has broken a rule. A trader who faced a halted stock, or a data outage, or a signal from two names at once with size for only one, has met a gap. Recording only the deviation loses that difference permanently.

The Test Is Simple

Open the written rules and look for the case. If a clear instruction exists and was not followed, it is a violation. If the instruction is absent, ambiguous, or contradicted by another line in the same document, it is a gap. This takes under a minute per incident and it has to be done at the time, because reconstructing it later reliably favours the flattering interpretation.

Gaps Cluster Around the Unusual

Most uncovered cases involve conditions that occur a few times a year. Two qualifying setups at once. A platform failure during the first hour. A session where the opening range never resolves in either direction. None of them appear often enough to have been written down, and all of them will happen again, which is exactly what makes the gap worth closing.

Different Remedies

Violations respond to reduced position sizing, a shorter watchlist and a checklist that is actually completed. Gaps respond to writing one more line in the trading plan. Applying the first remedy to a gap produces a cautious trader who still has no instruction for the situation, and the same incident recurs with a smaller loss attached.

Keep a Standing Gap List

A short list of uncovered cases, added to whenever one appears, is the most useful single page most reviews produce. Closing one or two per period keeps the plan growing where it is actually being tested rather than where it feels incomplete, and after a year the list is a fairly accurate map of what the market has thrown at the system.