What belongs in a trading plan template?
Begin with facts you can explain without defending a prediction. Name the account and the exact symbol used by your broker. Choose the timeframe on which a condition must occur, and define when the plan stops being relevant. A London-session idea should not quietly become an overnight position simply because the first entry did not work.
Next, save a chart and write the observation separately from the working idea. “Price reached the prior session high” is an observation. “A hold above that high may fit my continuation setup” is an interpretation. Keeping those sentences apart makes it easier to notice when the interpretation has stopped fitting the evidence.
Copy this one-page structure
- Context: account, exact instrument, session, timeframe and valid-until time.
- Observed facts: the level or behavior you can currently see.
- Working idea: the explanation you want to test, not a forecast to protect.
- Buy scenario: observable conditions, in the order your strategy requires.
- Sell scenario: its own conditions, or “Stand aside” if you do not trade that direction.
- Wait scenario: what must remain unresolved before you consider an entry.
- Invalidation: the evidence that ends the original idea.
- Risk and exit: the loss budget and exit rules you decide before entry.
- Review: the actual trade, saved plan version and what you followed or changed.
Download the editable Markdown trading plan template. It is plain text: copy it into your notes or use it to prepare your fields in the Trade Plan preview. The file works without an account; the preview uses synthetic trades and browser-local saves.
A practical example, with a real waiting branch
Consider a hypothetical instrument trading around a level you marked before the session. Your buy branch asks for a candle close above that level, a return toward it, and a retest that satisfies your written criteria. The close alone does not complete all three steps. If price moves away without a retest, your plan can remain waiting instead of inventing permission to chase.
Your sell branch needs a separate reason. Failure of the buy setup is not evidence that the sell setup is ready. You might require a close back below the level and a different confirmation sequence, or choose not to trade sells at all. These are examples of how to document a process, not recommendations for a profitable entry rule.
Keep the plan small enough to use
A template with forty fields is easy to abandon during a busy session. Start with one instrument and one decision you regularly rush. Write conditions another person could understand: “15-minute candle closed above the marked level” is easier to review than “momentum looks strong.” If you cannot describe a condition clearly, record the uncertainty and wait.
Decide risk before treating any confirmation as actionable. A completed checklist does not remove slippage, spread changes or the possibility of a losing trade. Use the position size calculator to examine your own assumptions, and keep account-level limits in your trading rule tracker.
Review the saved decision, not a rewritten story
After a completed trade is available, link it to the version that existed when you decided. Edgelog keeps saved plan revisions and lets you record Followed, Deviated, or Insufficient evidence. Linking a trade and selecting a Playbook strategy does not create another execution or add a second copy of its profit and loss.
Write one useful comparison: what was planned, what you observed, and what you actually did. A profitable deviation can still reveal a process problem; a planned loss can still be consistent execution. Later revisions help prepare the next decision, but they should not be used as proof that the earlier trade followed conditions you wrote afterward.
Further reading and boundaries
CME Group’s trade-plan course treats methodology, risk management, strategies and the trader log as parts of a broader plan. This template addresses the setup-level decision inside that broader process. It does not replace research, testing or your own account rules.
The chart and confirmations in Edgelog are recorded by you. There is no automatic breakout detection, candle-close verification, price feed, signal engine or order execution in Trade Plan. The benefit is a clearer record to review, not a promise of fewer losses or a guaranteed trading edge.