Anatomy of a play

1 The standard

If it isn't written this precisely, it isn't a play

A vague setup can't be tested, sized, or repeated. A real play answers ten questions, every time. Think of them as the fields on a form: until all ten are filled, you don't yet have something you can risk money on with discipline.

Below is each component, what it means, and the test for whether you've written it well enough. Work through them in order — earlier answers constrain later ones.

2 The ten components

Every play, field by field

• 1Name & one-line description. A memorable handle and a single sentence. "The Opening-Range Breakout: buy the break of the first 15 minutes' high on a strong gap." If you can't say it in one line, it isn't focused enough yet.
• 2The thesis — why it works. The edge. What repeatable behavior or inefficiency are you exploiting? Trapped sellers covering? Institutions accumulating? Momentum continuation after fresh news? If you can't name why it should work, you're pattern-matching, not trading an edge.
• 3Market context & conditions. When the play is valid — and when to switch it off. Trend or range? Index in an uptrend? Fresh news or none? Time of day, sector strength, volatility regime. Most plays only work in specific conditions; naming them is half the edge.
• 4The scan — how you find it. The concrete filter that surfaces candidates: price/volume thresholds, relative volume, float, a pattern, a news catalyst. This is what you actually run each day to build your watchlist.
• 5The entry trigger. The exact, objective event that puts you in — "a break of the prior bar's high after the pullback holds the 20-EMA." Specific enough that two people reading it would enter at the same place. Vague triggers are where discretion quietly destroys an edge.
• 6Invalidation & stop. Where the thesis is proven wrong — decided before entry. This defines your 1R (one unit of risk). Not "where I'd feel bad," but "where the reason for the trade no longer holds." See risk of ruin for why this is non-negotiable.
• 7Position sizing & risk. How big, expressed as risk: a fixed % of the account per 1R, adjusted by the play's grade. The stop distance and your risk-per-trade together set the share/contract count — never the other way around.
• 8Targets & exit plan. How you get out of winners and the in-between: a measured-move target, scaling out, trailing a moving average, or a "reasons to sell" list (momentum stalls, level lost, time stop). Cap losers; let winners run.
• 9Expected stats. Your honest estimate (then measured reality) of win rate, average win and loss in R, and the resulting expectancy — over a stated sample size. A play with no stats is a hope. Lesson 4 covers how to gather these.
• 10Examples, variations & failure modes. Two or three annotated charts of the play working, one of it failing, and any A+ vs. B variations. Seeing the failures is how you learn to pass on the look-alikes that don't have the edge.

3 The template

Copy this for every play

Keep one page per play, in this order. Filling every field is the discipline — blanks are exactly where losses hide.

4 The discipline

Blanks are where edges leak

The value isn't in the fancy formatting — it's that the format makes gaps impossible to ignore. No stop written? You don't have a play. No conditions? You'll trade it in the regime where it loses. No stats? You can't tell skill from luck. Treat any empty field as a stop sign: finish the research before you risk the money.