The Workshop · The Trade Desk · one trade at a time · 9 of 11
The desk keeps a record of the rules. Your page keeps a record of you: what you took, what you skipped, and what each choice cost.
Suppose you had followed the list through the 21 sessions SHOP was open. The record page measures the house one way: the daily marks of the whole book, 20 slots, after costs, beside the S&P 500 over the same sessions. Over those 21 sessions the book made +4.4% while the index did -1.2%. Your page measures you the same way, and then asks one question honestly: against the rules on the same trades, how did your choices do?
The desk closed 40 trades in that window, 14 of them up, SHOP among them. Each one took about one slot of 20 (a little more for a calm name, a little less for a wild one: lesson 8), so a close of +10% adds about +0.5% to the book and a close of −2% takes about 0.1% off: many small exits by the rule, a few that ran, and the window is the sum. Untick the ones you would have skipped and watch your book move away from the house's.
Your book (the daily marks of what you held, at your size), open trades, closed average, you against the S&P 500 over the days you were in, you against the house on the trades you both took, and the house against the S&P. The point of the last three is that a return means nothing without what else was available on the same days.
Key insight. The record that matters is not your P&L. It is the gap between your P&L and the rules' on the same trades. If the gap is negative, the thing to change is not the rules.
The trades, open, closed and skipped, with notes and a CSV; the exit calendar, which lists what fires next on what you hold; the feed; your watch list; the badges, which reward process (tracking, closing by the rule) before performance; and Settings, where sizing, notifications and auto-track live. Auto-track, on Pro, puts every line the desk posts into your tracker at the settle, so the page becomes the house's trades plus your decisions.
The account icon in the top bar opens it, or trademath.com/me. The manual's chapter: Your desk, your page.
Keep this: the page grades decisions, not trades. Skip one, add one, close one early, and it tells you what that was worth.
Analytical tools and historical measurements for educational and informational purposes only; not investment advice or a recommendation. Replayed figures are hypothetical: today's rules applied to past prices, after modelled costs, and no account was traded on them. Hypothetical results have inherent limitations and do not represent actual trading. Past performance, including backtested results, does not guarantee future outcomes. Trading stocks involves substantial risk of loss.
The Workshop is education, not advice. Replayed numbers are averages over many trades, after average trading costs (2 bps a side on a stock, 1 on a fund, included for fairness; yours vary by broker and liquidity) unless stated, and are not forecasts; the live record is on the engine page. Analytical tools and historical measurements for educational and informational purposes only; not investment advice or a recommendation. Replayed figures are hypothetical: today's rules applied to past prices, after modelled costs, and no account was traded on them. Hypothetical results have inherent limitations and do not represent actual trading. Past performance, including backtested results, does not guarantee future outcomes. Trading stocks involves substantial risk of loss. About · Support · Terms · Privacy · Refunds Open the deskManualThe EngineChangelog