The TDLab Blog
Trading performance, explained.
Practical guides on behavior, market context and the unglamorous work of connecting trading decisions with evidence instead of predictions.
Latest guides
Practical, connected guides for understanding behavior, historical market context and the process behind your trading.
What Is COT Data? How to Read Commercial Positioning Without Turning It Into a Signal
COT data shows how groups of futures-market participants are positioned. The useful question is not simply bullish or bearish—it is where positioning sits inside its own history and how you personally traded under similar conditions.
Trading Seasonality Explained: What a Seasonal Curve Actually Tells You
A seasonal curve compresses completed years into a comparable calendar path. It can reveal recurring stronger and weaker periods, but it cannot tell you that this year must repeat the average.
How Interest Rates Affect Currencies and Stock Indices — Without Pretending They Predict the Next Trade
Rates matter because they shape relative monetary conditions and the cost of capital. Their relationship with currencies and indices is real, but never simple enough to become a one-line trading signal.
Daily Trading Journal Routine: What to Do After the Session
A useful daily journal routine is a short data-quality pass, not a second trading session. Close open loops, grade decisions before outcomes and preserve only the context your weekly review will need.
How to Stop Overtrading: Find the Trigger in Your Trade History
Overtrading is not simply taking many trades. It is the point where additional trades stop meeting your process. Find that point, identify the trigger and make the corrective rule measurable.
Prop Firm Trading Journal: Track the Rules Before They Cost the Account
A prop firm journal must do two jobs at once: preserve an exact record of the firm's current account rules and reveal the personal behaviors that push the trader toward those limits.
Trading Journal Template: What to Track and What Most Templates Miss
A trading journal template should do more than record entry, exit and P&L. The useful version captures context, decision quality, discipline mistakes and the review loop that turns data into change.
What Is a Trading Journal? A Practical Guide for Serious Traders
A trading journal is not just a place to record entries and exits. Used well, it becomes the system that shows what you did, why you did it and which behaviors are actually moving your performance.
Trading journal vs spreadsheet: what actually changes
Most traders start journaling in a spreadsheet. It works until you need to answer the only question that matters: which behaviors are costing me money, and what should I fix first?