Trading plan adherence is the share of your trades you marked yourself as matching your trading plan. It is a binary question asked on every trade, and it is probably the best predictor of an account's survival, far ahead of win rate.
Out of 100 trades
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A trading plan is the set of conditions you gave yourself before entering: which market, which setup, what size, what hours, what loss limit. Plan adherence measures one thing only, the share of your trades that ticked all those boxes.
The question is binary, and that is intended. A nuance invites negotiating with yourself, a yes or no does not. A trade taken outside your time window is off plan, even if it was excellent otherwise, and it is precisely that rigidity that makes the measure useful.
The prerequisite is unavoidable: you need a written plan. That is why this statistic is missing for almost everyone, and also why it predicts so well: a trader who can answer this question has already done most of the work.
Plan adherence = trades marked compliant ÷ total number of trades × 100
Unlogged trades are not compliant trades. Counting them as such turns a forgetting rate into a discipline rate.
Compliance covers the entry conditions, not the management afterwards. A compliant trade can be badly managed, and trade grading will say so.
Without a written plan, this percentage measures what you remember deciding, which varies with the trade's result. So it has to be written beforehand, once.
| Adherence rate | What it describes |
|---|---|
| over 90% | Rare. Either real discipline, or a plan so broad everything fits in it. |
| 70 to 90% | Good. Deviations are exceptions, and they can be spotted one by one. |
| 50 to 70% | A third of your activity sits outside what you had decided. |
| under 50% | The plan does not describe what you do. Either the plan needs rewriting, or the practice needs taking back in hand. |
| no written plan | The question has no answer, and that is the only job that counts before everything else. |
The first row contains a trap worth stating: a very high rate can describe a plan that is too broad. A plan allowing every market, every hour and every size is respected 100% without constraining anything. So the rate is always read with the question 'what exactly does this plan forbid me?'.
The fourth row calls for a decision, and not always the one you expect. Under 50%, it is not necessarily discipline that is missing: sometimes it is the plan describing a trader you are not. Rewriting the plan so it matches what you deliberately do is a legitimate option, as long as it stays a decision and not a capitulation.
62% adherence, and above all: off-plan trades cost $4,200. The quarter ends at +$2,700 while the plan alone would have returned $6,900. No method improvement produces such a gap, and it requires nothing but not taking the trades you had forbidden yourself.
It is the most profitable calculation in a whole journal, and it fits in one line: the P&L of off-plan trades. It is negative for the vast majority of traders, and often by an amount exceeding anything a method improvement could produce.
That figure has a rare property: it points at a gain requiring no new skill. There is nothing to learn in order not to take a trade you had forbidden yourself.
A low rate asks a question with two answers. If off-plan trades lose, the practice needs taking back in hand. If they win regularly and have for a long time, perhaps the plan is too narrow, and rewriting it is legitimate.
The difference between the two reads in the P&L, not in intentions. It is also the only protection against a plan you widen every time you break it.
The first flaw is the plan being too broad. A 95% rate obtained with a plan forbidding nothing measures nothing at all. The question to ask alongside the figure is always the same: what does this plan stop me doing? If the answer is vague, so is the percentage.
The second is counting unlogged trades as compliant. It is the default setting in many tools, and it turns a forgetting rate into a discipline rate. A trader who ticks the box only when proud of their trade mechanically gets an excellent score.
The third is the plan widened after the fact. It is tempting to rewrite a rule so a profitable trade becomes compliant, and it happens almost without thinking. A plan adapting to trades already taken measures nothing: it is a report disguised as a rule.
The classic mistake. Widening the plan after an off-plan trade that won. The rule then becomes a report of what you already did, and the percentage rises with no discipline having changed. If a kind of trade deserves entering the plan, that is decided cold, not on the evening of a gain.
| Indicator | Formula | What it measures | When to use it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plan adherence | compliant trades ÷ total | Compliance, as yes or no | Quantifying what indiscipline costs |
| Trade grading | mean of the grades given | Quality of the act, scaled | Separating bad luck from error |
| Trades with a stop | trades with a stop ÷ total | One single rule, verifiable | Measuring baseline protection |
| Win rate | winners ÷ total | The result, without the process | Describing a frequency of gains |
Market, setup, hours, size, loss limit. A plan you cannot reread in ten seconds before entering is not consulted, so not respected, and the percentage that follows measures nothing.
It is the most profitable calculation in a journal. If it is negative, you have just found a gain requiring no new skill: simply do not take those trades.
That is the exact moment a rule dies. If a kind of off-plan trade wins regularly and has for a long time, rewrite the plan cold, on a Sunday, not on the evening of a gain.
It is the share of your trades you marked as matching your trading plan, that is the conditions you set yourself before entering: market, setup, hours, size, loss limit. The question is binary, compliant or not.
Because accounts empty through indiscipline rather than lack of setups. A trader can show an excellent win rate for months and lose their account on a few off-plan trades taken too large. Win rate does not see those trades as a group, this percentage does.
Look first at the P&L of off-plan trades. If it is negative, the practice needs taking back in hand. If they win regularly and have for a long time, your plan may be too narrow, and rewriting it is legitimate, provided it is done cold and not on the evening of a gain.
Not necessarily. A plan allowing every market, every hour and every size is respected almost always without constraining anything. The question to ask alongside the figure is simple: what exactly does this plan stop me doing?
Yes, and that is the real prerequisite. Without a written plan, compliance is judged on what you remember deciding, and that memory adjusts to the trade's result. Five lines are enough: market, setup, hours, size, loss limit.
In Tradoshi, plan compliance is ticked in the Trade Review screen, next to the trade grade and the free review note. It is a box, not a nuance, and unlogged trades are not counted as compliant.
The calculation described above happens in the Reports screen with nothing to type: Plan followed is a metric there, and net P&L crossed with it directly gives what off-plan trades cost. The Discipline screen handles what comes next, by following the rules you set yourself while you trade rather than afterwards.
To go deeper on this: read the full guide. Every term is gathered in the glossary.