Patterns in your trading

Patterns answer the question every trader should ask but rarely measures: what has breaking my own rules actually cost me? They are plain statistics on the trades in your own journal, phrased as observations, never as advice.

What Luxabit looks for

Up to 5 patterns are shown at once, the strongest first. Examples with made-up numbers:

• When you follow all your rules, your expectancy is +0.4R (n=14), versus −0.3R when you break at least one (n=9).
• When you tag “FOMO”, your expectancy is −0.6R (n=5), versus +0.2R without.
• Your discipline score is 92 for trades in the morning (before 12:00), versus 71 in the afternoon and evening (after 15:00).
• Your “Breakout retest” setup has an expectancy of +0.5R when all rules are followed (n=8), versus −0.2R when at least one rule is broken (n=6).
• Trades you said fit your setup before you took them have an expectancy of +0.3R (n=15), versus −0.4R for trades you were in doubt about or said didn't fit (n=7).

In detail:

• Your rules: your expectancy (average R per trade) on trades where you followed all your rules (a Discipline Score of 100) versus trades where you broke at least one.
• Behaviour tags: for each tag such as FOMO, revenge trade, moved stop, early exit, late entry or oversized, your expectancy with the tag versus without.
• Time of day: your average Discipline Score in the morning, the middle of the day and the afternoon and evening, in your plan's timezone. Shown when the difference is meaningful.
• Setups: for each playbook (or, for a trade without one, the strategy you logged), your expectancy when you followed all rules versus when you broke one. Only when you trade more than one setup.
• Your setup answer: your expectancy on trades you said fit your setup before you took them, versus trades you were in doubt about or said didn't fit. The answer is your own, given on the pre-trade check or in your journal; a trade imported from your exchange takes it over from the plan it carries out.

Which plans include patterns

Patterns are part of the Trader and Pro plans. On Starter, your journal, statistics and Discipline Score work in full, and the patterns panel shows what you'd get. See Plans and pricing.

When patterns appear

Patterns use closed trades with a result in R; a trade without a stop-loss has no R and is left out. A comparison only appears once each side has at least 3 trades. Below 20 trades, a pattern carries a "too few trades" warning: with small samples, luck can easily look like a pattern.

How to read them

• Patterns describe your past, not the future. They are not a prediction and not a strategy.
• Compare the size of the effect with the number of trades behind it. A big difference over 6 trades says less than a modest one over 60.
• Use them to choose one habit to work on, such as "no trade within an hour after a loss", and check again after the next batch of trades.
• You can ask the coach in the chat to go through them with you. It states your patterns as facts and asks about your process; it never turns them into advice on what to trade.

Why it matters

Most traders believe their rules help. Patterns show whether that is true for you, in your own numbers. That is often more convincing than any rule of thumb.