The trading business plan

1. Mandate and objectives. What you trade (instruments, sessions — from your A1.5 routine), the time you can actually give it per week, and your objective stated in process-first terms: e.g. "execute my two strategies at ≥90% plan-adherence, targeting a positive expectancy over rolling 100-trade samples, with maximum drawdown never exceeding 15%." Note what is absent: a monthly income promise. Returns are an output of edge, variance and size; only risk is directly controllable, so objectives are written on risk and process.

A dose of arithmetic belongs in this section, because it sets the emotional contract. Suppose your verified expectancy is +0.3R per trade at 1% risk, 12 trades a month — expected value ≈ +3.6% a month before variance, which will routinely deliver −5% months anyway (A2.4). On a $5,000 account that is ~$180/month expected: real, worth compounding, and nowhere near a salary. Writing this down in advance is what prevents the account-killing behaviour of needing the market to pay rent — the plan should state explicitly that living costs are not a dependency of trading income until the account and track record reach defined thresholds.

2. Strategies. One subsection per strategy, each with: the edge hypothesis in one sentence (why this makes money — whose mistake or flow are you being paid for?); the full setup/entry/exit/management rules (from P3); the evidence — backtest and forward-test statistics with sample sizes (A3.1, A2.3); the regime map — conditions where it thrives and where it goes dormant (A2.4); and its cost model — spread, slippage, swap budget per trade (A3.2–A3.3). A strategy without all five parts is an idea, not an asset.

3. Risk framework. The load-bearing section, all numbers explicit: risk per trade (e.g. 1% standard, 0.5% for the newer strategy); maximum daily loss (e.g. −3R → flat, platform closed); weekly stop (e.g. −6R → review before resuming); maximum concurrent risk and per-currency exposure caps (correlated AUD/USD + NZD/USD longs are one position and a half, not two — P2.5); the drawdown protocol staging table from A2.4 with its restart conditions; and event policy (which calendar events you are flat for, from A1.5). This section, agreed with yourself in writing, is the "risk desk" of your one-person fund — and it outranks you intraday. That sentence should appear verbatim in your plan.

4. Operations. The routines as scheduled commitments: weekly bias sheet, daily brief/debrief, Friday review, monthly metrics meeting (A1.5, A2.2, A2.3) — with their time budgets. Infrastructure: platform, VPS if EAs run (A3.1), data/charting stack, journal tooling, backup access (second device, broker phone line) and an incident playbook: what you do, position by position, when the platform dies mid-trade. Brokerage details: account type and why (raw-spread vs standard arithmetic from A3.2), leverage setting, negative-balance protection status.

5. Finances. Trading capital and — stated bluntly — its loss tolerance: money whose total loss changes nothing about your life, or the enterprise fails A2.4's red-line test before it starts. Segregation from living money. The compounding-versus-withdrawal policy (e.g. compound fully until 2× starting capital, then withdraw 25% of quarterly profits above high-water mark). Cost budget: data, VPS, tools — measured against realistic expected profit, which for small accounts often reveals that a $60/month tool stack needs a +14% year on $5,000 just to pay for itself. Taxes: a note to determine your local treatment and keep records — jurisdiction-specific and outside this course's scope, but inside the plan's.

6. Growth and scaling. The rules for size changes, both directions: e.g. scale risk per trade upward only at new equity highs and ≥100 trades at current size with positive expectancy (A2.3's sample-size discipline); scale down per the drawdown protocol. Adding a new strategy requires the full Section-2 evidence dossier on demo first. Nothing scales because of a feeling.

7. Governance: review and amendment. The plan's own change-control: metrics reviewed monthly, plan re-ratified quarterly. Amendments are written, dated, justified with data, and take effect the following week — never intraday, never during an open trade, never inside a Stage-2+ drawdown (the moments when the rewrite urge is strongest are precisely when the current rules are doing their job). Keep every superseded version; the diff history of your plan is a record of your development as a trader.