Habits

Habits

Habits tests a fixed list of situations against your closed trades and shows which ones cost or earn you money. Each situation compares the trades placed in it with comparable trades placed outside it, so you can see whether you trade differently after a loss, late in the day or when you re-enter quickly.

The page is in Analytics → Edge → Habits. It follows your active account scope, filter, date range, P&L display mode and timezone. Days are calendar days in your timezone. Sequences such as "after a loss" or "4th trade of the day" run within one account, so trades copied across accounts do not count as each other's next trade.

Situations

Your usual size is the median size of up to 50 trades on that instrument in that account that had already closed before the measured entry. It needs 5 earlier closed trades on the instrument. Size is the completed trade’s total entry quantity, including scale-ins.

Read the page

Habits answers two questions:

• Does a win or a loss change your next trade? This covers trades after a win, after one or more losses in a row, after a big loss, while up or down on the day, quick re-entries and bigger size after a loss.
• Do your results change as the day goes on? This covers your 1st trade of the day, your 2nd and 3rd, your 4th and later, and busy days.

A question is answered once one of its situations is rated Likely or Confirmed. The page opens with the answer that moves the most money, as a plain sentence such as "You trade worse after a loss." Beside it you see three figures:

• the average result per trade in that situation;
• the average per trade of your other trades;
• the difference per trade, in red when the situation does worse and in green when it does better, with that difference times the number of trades underneath. This is how much those trades made or lost compared with your other trades, not their own result.

The suggested rule, other situations that point the same way, the confidence, and how many trades and days the answer rests on follow. Next to the answer, a chart shows every situation of that question.

Every other question gets its own tile. A tile shows the difference per trade as one large number, the answer as a sentence when the evidence points one way (the question while it does not), the confidence, and a small chart. On Timing and Markets & size, tiles are grouped under headings such as Time of day or Position size. Situations that read in order, such as after a win and after 1, 2 and 3 losses in a row, are columns around one line. A column above the line means you make more per trade there than on your other trades; a column below means less. Only Likely and Confirmed results are red or green; results that could still be chance are gray, and a dot on the line means too few trades to compare. Hover over a column for its exact averages and trade counts, or over a tile's title for what it compares. Questions without a single comparison yet show as small Not enough trades yet labels under their group. A one-line legend above the tiles repeats what the colors and dots mean and links to this article.

Select a column or a situation to see its trades, newest first, with each trade's result on one line against both averages. Select a trade to open it.

Confidence

Confirmed is strict on purpose. When many situations are tested on the same trades, some look different by chance. Tradeways checks the whole list together and requires the result to hold without its single largest trade.

Limits

• Results describe your history. They do not predict future trades.
• In tick and point modes, only trades of your main instrument class carry a value, because ticks of different classes cannot be added up. The other trades still count as previous trades in a sequence. A note on the page says when this applies.
• Trades without a value in the active P&L mode are left out of the numbers, and the page shows how many.
• A day starts at midnight in your timezone, not at a market session open.

See also

• Timing
• Markets & size
• Filters
• Monte Carlo Analysis
• P&L Display