About this guide: This template is a practical framework based on common trading review practices. Adapt sections and metrics to your trading style. Example numbers in the compliance table are illustrative. See our editorial methodology.
Why Monthly Reviews Matter
Daily reviews catch individual trade mistakes. Weekly reviews spot short-term patterns. But monthly reviews are where you see the real picture: are you actually improving, or just oscillating?
Without a monthly review, traders often fall back into old patterns within a few weeks — a point emphasized in Investopedia's guide to trading journals. They fix something, forget about it, and regress. A written monthly review creates a paper trail of what you committed to changing — and whether you actually changed it.
Section 1: Headline Numbers
Start with the raw data. Pull these directly from your trading journal or performance dashboard:
| Metric | This Month | Last Month | 3-Month Avg |
|---|---|---|---|
| Net PnL | — | — | — |
| Total Trades | — | — | — |
| Win Rate | — | — | — |
| Profit Factor | — | — | — |
| Avg Winner ($) | — | — | — |
| Avg Loser ($) | — | — | — |
| Largest Winner | — | — | — |
| Largest Loser | — | — | — |
| Max Drawdown | — | — | — |
| Trading Days Active | — | — | — |
The "3-Month Avg" column is critical. One month of data is noisy. Comparing against a rolling average tells you whether this month was an outlier or part of a trend.
Don't interpret yet — just record the numbers. Interpretation comes later.
Section 2: Setup-Level Breakdown
Your account-level numbers blend everything together. Break performance down by setup type:
| Setup | Trades | Win Rate | PF | Avg R | Net PnL |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Setup A (e.g., breakout) | — | — | — | — | — |
| Setup B (e.g., pullback) | — | — | — | — | — |
| Setup C (e.g., reversal) | — | — | — | — | — |
| Untagged / Impulse | — | — | — | — | — |
The "Untagged / Impulse" row is often the most revealing. If a significant portion of your trades don't fit any defined setup, you're trading off plan. That row should be shrinking month over month.
Use your journal's setup tags to generate this data. If you haven't been tagging setups, start now — this section is impossible without it.
Section 3: Top 3 Best and Worst Trades
Pull your three largest winners and three largest losers. For each one, answer:
- Was the entry per plan? (Yes/No)
- Was the exit per plan? (Yes/No)
- Was the position size correct? (Yes/No)
- Would I take this trade again? (Yes/No/Modified)
The pattern you're looking for: are your biggest winners coming from disciplined execution, or lucky deviations? Are your biggest losers from bad setups, or good setups with bad management?
Section 4: Biggest Leak This Month
This is the most important section. Identify the single behavior or pattern that cost you the most money or potential this month. Common leaks include:
- Moving stop losses: Widening stops after entry, turning small losses into big ones
- Early exits on winners: Closing at 1R when the setup targets 2-3R
- Overtrading after losses: Taking 3-4 revenge trades after a loser (see overtrading cost analysis)
- Trading outside your session: Taking setups in sessions you're not prepared for
- Sizing up after winners: Increasing risk on the next trade after a big win
- No-setup trades: Entries that don't match any defined setup
Quantify the leak if possible. "I moved my stop on 8 trades this month. Those trades had an average outcome of -2.1R instead of the planned -1R. Total damage: $1,840 in excess loss."
One specific, quantified leak beats a vague list of 10 things to improve.
Section 5: Rule Compliance Audit
List your trading rules and score compliance honestly:
| Rule | Compliance | Violations | Cost of Violations |
|---|---|---|---|
| Max 1% risk per trade | 92% | 3 trades oversized | -$420 excess loss |
| No trading first 15 min | 85% | 4 early entries | -$680 |
| Only trade defined setups | 78% | 7 impulse trades | -$1,100 |
| Stop loss placed before entry | 100% | 0 | $0 |
| Max 3 trades per day | 90% | 2 days exceeded | -$350 |
The "Cost of Violations" column transforms vague feelings into hard numbers. When you can see that breaking your rules cost $2,550 this month, the motivation to follow them next month becomes concrete.
Section 6: Market Context
Your performance doesn't exist in a vacuum. Note the conditions this month:
- Dominant market regime: Trending, ranging, volatile, low-vol, mixed
- Key events: FOMC, NFP, CPI, earnings season, geopolitical
- How your strategy performed in this regime: As expected? Better? Worse?
- Any regime-dependent adjustments needed?
For more on how market conditions affect your metrics, see the performance analysis guide. This section prevents you from blaming yourself for market conditions and from crediting yourself for favorable ones. If your trend-following system underperformed in a choppy month, that's expected — not a signal to change the strategy.
Section 7: Next Month's Action Items
Everything above funnels into this section. Write 1-3 specific, measurable action items:
- Bad: "Trade better" / "Be more disciplined" / "Follow my rules"
- Good: "Reduce impulse trades from 7 to 3 or fewer by pausing 60 seconds before any entry not matching Setup A, B, or C"
- Good: "Hold winners to minimum 1.5R target — no exits before target unless invalidation candle prints"
- Good: "Cap daily loss at 2R — close platform after hitting limit. Log reason for each loss."
At the start of next month's review, the first thing you do is check whether you followed this month's action items. This creates accountability that compounds over time.
Putting It All Together in TSB
If you're using Trader's Second Brain, most of the data for Sections 1-3 is already calculated in your performance reports. You can filter by date range, setup, and session to populate the tables above in minutes.
The manual work is Sections 4-7: identifying your leak, auditing rule compliance, noting market context, and writing action items. This is the thinking that actually produces improvement — and it's the part most traders skip.
Set a calendar reminder for the 1st of each month. Block 45 minutes. Do not trade until the review is done. Your future self will thank you — in our experience, regular reflection tends to surface problems that pure trading volume doesn't fix.
