LoggingTradesAsk a trader who overtrades whether they meant to take eleven trades today and they will say no. Nobody plans it. It builds one reasonable-looking entry at a time, and by lunchtime the plan has quietly been replaced by a habit of clicking.
Overtrading means taking more trades than your edge supports. That is a different problem from sizing too big, and it usually has a different cause.
Why it happens
- Boredom. A good setup might show up twice a day. The screen moves all day. The gap between those two facts gets filled with trades that aren’t setups.
- The need to “do something.” Waiting feels like wasting the day. In trading, waiting is often the work.
- Chasing a loss. After a red trade, more trades feel like the way back to even. This overlaps with revenge trading, but it can also be slow and quiet rather than angry.
- Chasing a win. After a good morning, everything looks like another winner. Standards slip.
- Fear of missing the move. See fear and greed in trading for how that one drives entries.
- Variable rewards. Occasional wins from low-quality trades teach your brain that clicking works, the same way a slot machine does.
“It never was my thinking that made the big money for me. It always was my sitting.”
— Edwin Lefèvre, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator · Share this quote
Lefèvre’s line is about holding a good position, but the instinct behind it applies here too: the money in a trade isn’t in the activity. It is in the right decision, then the patience to let it play out.
Why more trades usually means worse trades
Your best setups are rare by definition. Every additional trade you take is, on average, a weaker one. Costs also add up: commissions and slippage are charged on every trade whether it was good or not, so a low-quality trade starts behind.
If your average trade has a small positive expectancy, then trades that are worse than average can have a negative one. Test that against your own numbers with the trading expectancy calculator: enter your win rate and average win and loss, then see what happens when the extra trades drag the win rate down a few points.
How to see overtrading in your journal
| Check | What to look for |
|---|---|
| Result by trade number | Trades 1–3 profitable, trades 6+ losing |
| Result by time of day | A midday stretch that gives back the morning |
| Time between trades | Clusters of entries a few minutes apart |
| Setup tag | “No setup” or “other” growing as the day goes on |
| Commissions | Fees as a large share of gross P&L on busy days |
You need a reasonable sample before trusting any of this. A few weeks of trades is a start. Fifty trades in a bucket tells you more than ten.
The fix: a trade cap and a quality filter
- Set a max number of trades per day. Pick it from your own history: look at the trade number where results start to fall off and set the cap just before it. Many traders land on three to five. Yours may differ.
- Write the setups you are allowed to take. If you can’t name the setup before you click, it isn’t a trade.
- Use a short checklist at entry. Setup name, stop, target, and one line: why this, why now?
- Count your trades out loud or on paper. Seeing “trade 4 of 4” changes behaviour.
- When you hit the cap, close the platform. Do not “just watch.” Watching is how the fifth trade happens.
- Give yourself something else to do in the gaps. A short walk, notes on the market, or reviewing earlier trades.
If you are on a prop firm account, fewer, better trades also help you stay well clear of the drawdown. See trailing drawdown explained.
Don’t swap one problem for another
A cap is a guardrail, not a goal. The aim isn’t to take fewer trades for its own sake. It is to take the ones your plan describes. On a slow day, zero trades is a valid result. On a day with several real setups, a cap that is too tight can make you skip good ones, which is why you set it from data and revisit it every month or two.
“You don’t need to know what is going to happen next in order to make money.”
— Mark Douglas, Trading in the Zone · Share this quote
Douglas’s point fits here: you don’t need to predict the next move to act well, and you don’t need to act on every move. Pick the situations where your edge applies and let the rest go by.
A two-week experiment
For ten trading days, set a cap, log every trade with its setup name, and rate each entry afterwards as “plan” or “impulse.” At the end, compare the two groups: average result, win rate, and fees paid. Whatever the numbers say, you will be deciding from your own data rather than from how the day felt.
LoggingTrades has an overtrading detector that flags busy days and shows what the extra trades cost, plus rules you can tick off on each trade.
FAQ
What is overtrading?
Taking more trades than your edge supports, usually driven by boredom, trying to recover a loss or excitement after a win, rather than by setups in your plan.
How many trades per day is too many?
There is no universal number. Check your own journal for the trade number where results start to decline and set a daily cap just below it.
Is taking no trades a bad day?
No. If no setup from your plan appeared, no trades is the correct outcome, and often the hardest one to execute.