Trade review framework
Trade Execution Review: A Practical Framework
Two traders can take the same setup and get opposite grades. Execution review measures how well you traded the plan — the part you control — instead of whether the market happened to cooperate.
Start free — no cardWhat it is
Execution quality vs. outcome
Outcome is whether the trade made money. Execution is whether you traded it the way you meant to: entered at your trigger, set and honored your stop, exited by plan, sized within your limit. The two come apart constantly — good execution loses sometimes, and sloppy execution wins sometimes.
Reviewing execution rather than outcome is what makes review compound. The market controls the result; you control the decisions. Grade the decisions and you are working on the only thing you can actually improve.
The scorecard
Four things to grade on every trade
Score each against your written play, separately from the result:
Entry
Did you enter at your defined trigger, or chase / jump early?
Stop
Was the stop set where the play said, and did you honor it without negotiating?
Exit
Did you exit by plan, or improvise out of fear or greed?
Sizing
Was risk within your limit, with no impulse size-up?
Common mistakes
Where execution reviews go wrong
Letting outcome leak in
Grading a winner well because it won. If the entry was a chase, it scores badly regardless.
No baseline play
You cannot grade execution without rules to grade against. Write the play first.
Grading vaguely
Score the same four parts the same way every time, so weeks are comparable.
FAQ
Are the scores objective or self-reported?
Self-reported, by design. No software can see whether you hesitated, chased, or broke your own rule — only you can. Mettle structures that self-report so it is fast, honest, and comparable week to week, and keeps its analysis grounded in what you actually logged.
How is execution review different from trade analytics?
Analytics platforms compute objective stats from your fills — win rate, MAE/MFE, profit factor. Execution review grades the quality of your decisions against your plan, which is self-assessed. They answer different questions; Mettle is built for the second.
Is Mettle free to start?
Yes. You get full access free for 14 days with no card. We only ask for a card once you have reviewed three sessions, after the product has earned a place in your routine.
Grade what you control
Score entry, stop, exit, and sizing against your play on every trade, and watch your execution improve where it counts. Free to start, no card.
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