Trading Strategies: Building Rules-Based Execution Plans
A trading strategy is a rules-based plan that defines exactly when you enter, where you exit, and how much you risk. Without one, every decision is made under pressure and judged only by its outcome — which is how a lucky trade and a good trade become impossible to tell apart.
In development.
We are building out a full library of rules-based strategy guides covering trend following, mean reversion, and intraday momentum — each with setup conditions, entry and exit rules, stop placement, and the failure modes worth knowing in advance.
Expect the first guides here soon.
Available now
- Patterns Cheatsheet: An interactive, searchable library of every built-in pattern, filterable by direction and exportable to PNG.
In the meantime
The building blocks these strategies rely on are already documented:
- Trading Indicators: The trend, momentum, volatility, and volume tools that generate signals.
- Trading Patterns: The recurring price formations that define entries and invalidation levels.
- Risk Management: Position sizing, stop losses, and the rules that keep a losing streak survivable.
- Trading Metrics: How to measure whether a strategy is actually working once you run it.
Browse everything in one place in the Technical Analysis Glossary.
Frequently Asked Questions
Quick answers based on this page's topic.
A robust strategy must define precise entry triggers, stop-loss levels for capital protection, take-profit targets, and position-sizing rules. It should be grounded in a statistical edge—mathematical proof that the setup is profitable over a large sample size.
Strategy selection depends on your risk tolerance and available time. Day trading requires intense focus and high execution speed, while swing trading or trend following is better suited for those who prefer analyzing higher timeframes and managing trades over days or weeks.
Backtesting allows you to test your strategy against historical data to see how it would have performed. This process builds the 'psychological capital' needed to stick to your rules during future losing streaks, as you have already seen the system's long-term viability.