How to review trades
Review the week, not every tick. That is where the edge shows up.
The weekly review answers four questions: which setups worked, what the timing looked like, whether you followed your rules, and where the emotional leaks are. DuskAnalyst does the summarizing — weekly reports and AI insights on your own history.
Free tier: 2 accounts, no card required.
The framework
A four-question weekly trade review
Fifteen minutes, once a week, four questions.
1. Setups
Which tags/setups won and lost this week? If breakout is carrying you and news entries are leaking, the tags show it in one screen.
2. Timing & rules
What sessions and times hurt? Did you take trades outside your plan? Missed setups count too. Rule adherence is the behavior that actually compounds.
3. Emotions + the streak check
One line on how the week felt. On a losing streak: is it variance of a working edge, or violations? The data decides — DuskAnalyst's AI insights can check loss clustering and session patterns for you.
FAQ
Trade review questions, answered honestly.
How do I review my trades?
A good trade review answers four questions: (1) which setups won and which lost, (2) what the timing and sessions looked like, (3) whether you followed your rules, and (4) where the emotional leaks were — revenge trades, over-trading, moving stops. Fifteen minutes a week beats an hour a day for most traders, because the weekly view shows patterns the daily view hides. DuskAnalyst summarizes all of this for you: performance analytics, calendars and a weekly report, plus AI insights you can ask questions of. Data is stored on Cloudflare, identity is handled by Auth0, billing by Stripe, and the AI that answers your insight questions runs on DeepSeek. No card is required for the free tier.
How do I handle losing streaks without changing my strategy?
First, check the data before changing anything: is the streak a normal variance of a working edge, or a real breakdown (rule violations, new market regime, over-sizing)? A journal makes that check possible. If the data shows you followed your rules, the honest move is often patience with reduced size; if it shows violations, fix the behavior, not the strategy. DuskAnalyst's AI insights can interrogate your history for loss clustering and session patterns, and weekly reports keep the review consistent.
What should I look at in a weekly trading review?
Four things: win rate and profit factor for the week, the setups that contributed (positive and negative), adherence to your rules (including missed trades and revenge entries), and one emotional observation. You are looking for drift, not perfection. A structured journal with tags makes this a five-minute task; DuskAnalyst produces the weekly report automatically from your logged trades.
How much time should I spend reviewing trades?
Most successful traders we see in the community do a 15-30 minute weekly review; some full-time traders prefer a shorter daily check (the '1 hour/day reviewing trades' approach is on the high end and often burns people out). Consistency beats duration. If your review is taking hours, you are either over-analyzing or your logging is unstructured — a journal with tags and automatic reports fixes the second one.
Why is my win rate good but my account still loses?
Win rate alone hides the risk picture: small wins and large losses lose money even at a 60% win rate. The metrics that matter together are win rate, average win vs average loss (profit factor), and drawdown. This is exactly what a structured journal computes for you. DuskAnalyst shows win rate, profit factor and equity curve per account, and the AI insights can point at where the large losses cluster.
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