Glossary
What is trade review?
Trade review is the process of looking back at your trades and grading them — separating whether the setup was valid, whether you executed the plan, and what state of mind you were in — so each session teaches you something the P&L alone cannot.
Definition
A review is not a glance at the day's profit and a matching mood. It is a deliberate read-back where each trade is examined against the plan you had at entry, not against where price went afterward. The strongest reviews keep three questions apart: was this a setup from my playbook, did I execute it as written, and what was happening in my head while I did.
Reviewing by outcome quietly trains the wrong habits — it rewards a chased entry that happened to work and punishes a disciplined trade that happened to lose. A review process that scores the decision independent of the result is the antidote, and it is the habit most traders skip.
Why it matters
Journaling only pays off when something reads it back
Capturing trades without reviewing them is filing paperwork to yourself. The journal becomes a feedback loop only when you read the entries back and turn them into one concrete change for next session. Review is the step that converts a record into better decisions.
Mettle is built around the review, not just the log: every journaled trade gets a page with your entries and exits plotted on the candle chart, structured grading questions that stay the same each session, and a weekly loop that surfaces a lesson trade to look at closely. The grades are self-reported and honest about it — the value is the consistency, not surveillance.
Example
The winner that reviews as a C
You chased a breakout above your trigger, guessed at the stop, and it ran anyway — solidly green. Reviewed by outcome, it is a success to repeat. Reviewed properly, it is a C-minus execution on a valid setup: chased entry, improvised stop. Logged that way, fifty similar trades teach you to stop chasing instead of teaching you that chasing pays.
Related terms
Make the review automatic
In Mettle the review is waiting after every session: your trades on the chart, the same grading questions each time, and a weekly lesson trade picked for you. Free to start, no card.
Start free — no cardMore terms
New to journaling? Read our guide on how to journal trades.