1 Where plays come from
Build it from your own trades
The best playbook isn't copied from a book — it's mined from your own results. Every trade you take is raw data: the ones that worked, studied closely, become candidate plays; the ones that didn't reveal the look-alikes to avoid. Your job is to notice the patterns in your own winners and write them up with the Lesson 2 template.
Start a "candidate" section. When a trade works and you can articulate why, draft it as a play. When you've gathered enough instances to test it (Lesson 4), promote it to the main book. This is how a playbook grows honestly — earned, not borrowed.
2 The review loop
A living document, not a binder on a shelf
- ·Log every instance tied to its play and graded on process, using the daily report card habit.
- ·Review on a cadence — weekly and monthly. Look at each play's running stats and the mistakes you made executing it.
- ·Then act: promote a candidate that's proven its edge, demote (cut size on) one that's slipping, and retire one that's stopped working or whose conditions have vanished.
3 Worked example A
An intraday play in the template
Here's the Opening-Range Breakout from the strategy library, compressed into the Lesson 2 template so you can see the shape of a finished page:
Play: The Opening-Range Breakout
Full detail, chart, and risk notes: the Opening-Range Breakout playbook →
4 Worked example B
A swing play in the template
The same template fits a multi-day swing play just as well. Here's the Volatility-Contraction Pattern:
Play: The Volatility-Contraction Pattern (VCP)
Full detail, chart, and risk notes: the Volatility-Contraction Pattern playbook →
Notice both plays use the same ten fields — only the content changes. That consistency is the point: it makes every play comparable, gradable, and testable. Browse the full strategy library for more finished plays to model yours on.
★ You're done
From here
You now have the whole loop: define a play with the ten components, grade and size it, test it honestly, and keep it alive through review. Add one play at a time, prove each before you trust it, and let your book grow into a small set of setups you know cold.
Keep going
For the intraday, prop-desk version of this skill, take The Professional Desk. For the discipline that protects the whole book, see risk of ruin and the daily report card. Then study the traders whose methods became the plays in the first place.