Reviewing Execution and Strategy as Two Things

Score the rule following before looking at a single result. That is how orb trading review consultoriainnova sets the order deliberately, because a strategy for the opening range and the person executing it fail in different ways, and reading the profit and loss first contaminates every judgement that follows. A losing quarter run correctly and a winning quarter run carelessly call for opposite responses, and only a separated review will produce them.

Two Scores, Not One Verdict

Modern office with financial trading screens and a diverse team discussing strategies.

The first score is compliance: what proportion of the sessions were executed as written. The second is performance: what the rules produced when they were followed. Both are numbers and neither substitutes for the other. Combining them into a single impression of how the quarter went is what causes a good system to be abandoned after a badly executed stretch.

How to Measure Compliance

Professional stock market analyst monitoring data on multiple screens at a workstation.

Take each logged trade and ask four questions. Did it meet every filter. Was the entry taken at the trigger rather than before or after it. Was the position size the one the formula produced. Was the exit the one the plan specified, or a decision made in the moment. Four boxes per trade, counted at the end of the period, produces a percentage that is not open to interpretation.

Performance Is Measured on Compliant Trades Only

The strategy can only be judged by the trades that actually followed it. Including improvised entries in the expectancy calculation measures a mixture of two systems, one of which nobody has written down. Non compliant trades are still recorded and still counted in the account result, but they belong to the execution review, not to the assessment of the rules.

The Four Quadrants

Good compliance with good results means leave it alone. Good compliance with poor results is the only case that justifies changing the rules. Poor compliance with poor results is a discipline problem, and altering the strategy there will make things worse. Poor compliance with good results is the most dangerous quadrant of the four, because it rewards the behaviour that will eventually produce a serious drawdown.

Fix Them With Different Tools

Execution problems respond to smaller position sizing, a shorter watchlist, a printed checklist and fewer instruments during the first hour. Strategy problems respond to parameter work, a longer sample and a control group. Neither remedy does anything for the other, and applying the wrong one is how a review makes the next quarter worse than the one it examined.