Creating a trading plan

What a trading plan is

A trading plan is where you write your trading rules down once — your entry window, risk limits, whether a stop is required, how long a trade should be held, and more — and then hold yourself to them. Instead of living in your head, the rules live in Quaderno, which uses them to keep you honest.

Once a plan exists, you can pin trades to it, and Quaderno does three things for you:

• Scores your compliance. Each plan‑pinned trade gets a compliance percentage based on how well it followed the plan's rules, so you can see — over time — whether following your plan actually pays.
• Surfaces guardrails before the next trade. Rules like cool‑down period, drawdown halt, and daily/concurrent trade limits appear on the dashboard, and feed the “Clear to trade?” readiness tile.
• Shows your trading window. A plan's trading‑window rule powers the dashboard session clock, so you can tell at a glance whether you're inside the hours you're supposed to be trading.

In short: a plan turns your discipline from a good intention into something measurable.

How to create a trading plan

1. Open Plans. From the left sidebar, go to Plans.
2. Start a new plan. Click New Plan (top‑right), or Create your first plan if the list is empty.
3. Give it an identity:
   • Plan name (required) — e.g. Trend‑Following Stocks or Morning Scalps.
   • Asset classes — pick the classes this plan applies to (Stock, Options, Futures, Forex, Crypto). Trades pinned to the plan are typically in one of these.
   • Color — choose a swatch so the plan is easy to spot across the app.
4. Click “Save Plan.” You're taken straight to the plan's edit page, where you add the rules that give the plan its teeth.

Adding rules

On the edit page, find the Rules section and click “+ Add rule.” For each rule, pick a type, configure it, and (optionally) mark it Required so it counts toward compliance, or Critical for a rule you treat as a hard line. Rules are grouped into four families:

• Time‑based — Trading window (the hours/days you're allowed to enter), Trade duration (min/max hold time), Cool‑down period (minimum wait after a close).
• Risk — Max risk per trade, Stop‑loss required, Take‑profit required, Min risk:reward, Max concurrent open trades, Max daily trades, Max daily loss, Drawdown halt.
• Setup quality — Min setup grade, Required strategy tags, Emotional‑state minimum.
• Checklist — free‑form items you confirm before entering (e.g. “Trend alignment confirmed”).

Reorder rules with the up/down controls, then click Save Changes.

Tips

• Keep the plan active. Only an active plan's guardrails and trading window drive the dashboard signals — check the Status section if your plan isn't showing up there.
• Start with a few rules. You don't need every rule on day one. A trading window, a max‑risk‑per‑trade, and stop‑loss required already give you meaningful guardrails and a real compliance score. Add more as your process matures.
• Pin your trades. A plan only scores the trades you link to it, so get in the habit of attaching new trades to the plan they belong to — that's what powers your compliance %, guardrails, and “Clear to trade?” signals.
• Edits create a new version. Plans are versioned, so refining your rules over time keeps a history of how your process evolved without disturbing past trades.