How to Write Down a Strategy

Five lines a chart can answer

A strategy is written down as five lines, and every line is a question a chart can answer yes or no. What is read, and when: gold, daily bars, at the close. The setup, which must already be true: the last five closes above the 20-day average. The trigger, the one bar that fires: a low within 10 dollars of the average and a close above it. When to stop watching: a close below the average. And when to review the card itself: after twenty triggers, or three months. On 25 February 2025 the chart answered yes on every line. The card here is an example; the shape is the lesson.

A letter to your future self

Picture a letter to yourself, sealed today and opened on a day you will not remember why you wrote it. A strategy that lives in your head changes shape with your mood: after two losses it grows a new condition, after two wins it loses one. A strategy on paper is the same on the bad days as on the good ones, because the card cannot remember how yesterday felt. Writing it down is not paperwork. It is the only way the person reading the chart tomorrow runs the same strategy as the person who designed it today, and the card is the letter between them.

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