Rules Desk Journal & Workbook

A trade log that tells you what your record actually supports — and a workbook for writing rules specific enough to be checked against.

Twelve winners out of twenty is 60%, and 60% feels like a finding. It isn't one. A result that good on twenty trades is consistent with a true win rate anywhere from about 39% to about 78% — consistent with a system worth scaling and with one worth abandoning. Most of the decisions traders make after a good or bad week are made on evidence that does not support any decision at all.

This is two files that do something about that.

1. The Journal & Review (Excel / Google Sheets)

A 500-row trade log and a review tab that recalculates from it. Not a template with a win-rate cell — the statistics that actually decide things:

• The range your sample supports, not just the number it produced. A Wilson score interval on your win rate, and a plain-English line that says “nothing yet” until your sample earns better.
• Break-even win rate from your own payoff ratio, so you can compare it against that range rather than against a single lucky figure.
• Expectancy in dollars and in R, profit factor, and results split by setup — because a profitable-overall record is often one setup carrying two that are bleeding.
• What your rule breaks have cost, in dollars. It compares the average result of the trades where you followed your own rules against the ones where you didn't, and prices the difference. This is usually the largest number on the page, and it is the only one you can fix directly.
• Drawdown runway and a check on whether any trade was ever planned over your own risk cap.

Position sizing and planned risk calculate themselves from your entry, stop, contract count and instrument. Twelve futures contracts are pre-loaded with their point values; add your own.

2. The Workbook (18-page printable PDF)

• The three tests a rule has to pass before it counts as one, and six worked rewrites turning vague intentions into rules a stranger could check.
• A one-page rulebook worksheet — scope, entry, invalidation, risk caps, disqualifiers, circuit breakers.
• The sizing arithmetic worked through, with a position size card to fill in per instrument.
• Printable trade cards, a weekly review worksheet, and a desk card for the six things to check before an entry.

What's deliberately not in it

No setups. No strategy. No market opinion, no signals, no entries or exits, and no claim about money — not a number, not a timeline, not an implication. It cannot tell you whether a trade is a good idea, and it does not try to. Every figure it produces is arithmetic on numbers you typed in.

Who it's for

Traders who already have a method and want to find out whether they are following it, and what their record does and does not establish. It assumes you can place a bracket order and read a chart.

Who it isn't for

Anyone looking for a strategy, a shortcut, or a tool that tells them their last twenty trades prove they're ready. This one will tell you they don't — and that is the entire point of it.

Format: one .xlsx (opens in Excel or Google Sheets) and one PDF. Instant download. Licensed for one person's use.

Educational material only. Not financial, investment or trading advice, and not a signal service. Futures trading involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for every investor; most people who attempt it lose money, and you can lose more than you deposit. Nothing here promises or implies profit. Every order is yours, placed by you, on your own platform. See the Risk Disclosure.