How Rule Cost works.
Rule Cost is what the trades that broke your own rules netted, over a day, a week or any period. You set the rules; every trade is checked against them, and the results of the trades that broke at least one are added up.
On the synthetic sample week: 18 trades. 14 followed every rule and netted +$2,450; 4 broke one and netted −$1,620. As traded the week made +$830. Its Rule Cost is −$1,620.
The definition
- Rule Cost
- The sum of the recorded results of the counted trades in a period that broke at least one of your saved rules. A trade that breaks two rules is in that sum once, and under each rule it broke.
- A counted trade
- One of your own closed trades, in a live account, that is not a copied trade and has a recorded result. Reports and the Weekly Rule Cost count the trades in your base currency.
- On plan
- The sum of the counted trades that followed every rule. As traded is on plan plus the rule breaks.
- How it reads
- When the trades that broke a rule lost money: Rule Cost −X. When they made money: Rule breaks netted +X, because a gain is never called a cost. When no counted trade broke a rule: No rule breaks. When only trades left out of the figures broke one: Rule breaks on trades left out.
What a rule break is
Each trade belongs to the trading day of its entry time, on your account's clock. The day starts at midnight unless you choose another time; a day that starts at 18:00 is named after the date it ends on. Rules are checked for each account and each trading day, in order of entry. "Closed before" means closed at or before the trade's entry; a loss is a result below zero.
| Rule | A trade breaks it when |
|---|---|
| Enter only inside your trading window | Entered outside your window, by its entry time. The window starts at its first minute and ends before its last, so a trade entered at the end time is outside it; a window may run past midnight. |
| Maximum trades per day | Trade N + 1 of the trading day, in order of entry, and every trade after it. |
| Maximum loss per trade | A trade that lost more than the amount. |
| Stop for the day after this loss | Entered once the trades of that trading day that had closed before it had lost the amount or more in total. |
| Stop after losses in a row | Entered after N losing trades in a row that closed before it on the same trading day. A trade at breakeven ends the run; a trade without a result is passed over. |
| Wait after a losing trade | Entered less than N minutes after a losing trade closed, on the same trading day. |
| Maximum contracts per trade | A trade of more than N contracts. |
N and the amount are your own settings. A rule you have not set is not checked. See each rule on the sample week in the rule library.
What stays unknown
- No entry time. Some exports give only the close. The trade's day and order then come from its exit time, and it is not checked against your window or the wait after a loss, which need the entry.
- No recorded result. The trade is checked against every rule that does not need its result: it can still be outside your window or one trade too many. It cannot break the loss per trade, it is not a loss in a run or in the day's total, and no figure includes it.
- No contracts recorded. The trade cannot break the contracts rule.
- Another currency. Amounts in different currencies are never added together or converted. Trades in another currency are checked and named, not counted.
- Practice accounts. Simulation, replay and trades whose source is not confirmed are checked and reviewed on their own, never in your live figures.
Wherever a figure leaves trades out, the page says how many and why.
What Rule Cost is not
- Not a forecast. It is hindsight on your own trades. Skipping a trade could have changed the ones after it, so on plan is what the trades that followed your rules made, not what you would have made.
- Not prevention. It is counted from trades after they close. It does not stop a trade.
- Not advice. No signals and no view on what to buy or sell. The rules are yours.
- Not a comparison. It measures your trades against your rules, never against other traders.
One check, everywhere
The free Trade Check runs the check in your browser. Your account runs the same check on the server for the Review, Reports, the Weekly Rule Cost and the Rule Cost card, and it is tested to give the same result, trade by trade, as the one in your browser.
The sample week, worked through
A synthetic week of 18 NQ trades, checked against three rules:
| Rule | Trades that broke it | What they netted |
|---|---|---|
| No trades after 15:30 | 2 | −$850 |
| Max 3 trades a day | 1 | −$405 |
| Stop after 2 losses in a row | 1 | −$365 |
Each of those 4 trades broke one rule, so the Rule Cost is their sum: −$1,620. The other 14 trades netted +$2,450, and the week as traded made +$830.