• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

TraderGav.com

Gav's trading blog - Perseverance, Consistency, Confidence

  • Home
  • Start Here
    • Back to Basics of Trading
    • Resource For Traders – The Best Tools for Traders
    • Learn Trading Articles
    • Sierra Chart Resource
  • Blog
    • Blog Posts
    • Other learning resource
    • Dummy Collection
    • Harmonic setups
  • About Me

Good Week, Bad Week: The Brutal Trading Pattern Killing Your Progress (and How to Fix It)

by Gav Leave a Comment

You know the pattern:

✅ Week 1 — You’re locked in. Patient. Picking clean setups. You finish green and think, “Finally, I’m leveling up.”
❌ Week 2 — You’re trigger-happy. Chasing moves. Breaking rules you swore you wouldn’t. By Friday, you’re back where you started, or worse.

Sound familiar?
You’re not alone. It’s one of the most common — and most soul-crushing — cycles in trading.

But here’s the thing: it’s not random.

It’s a pattern. Which means it can be broken.

Here’s how:


1. Stop Over-Celebrating Good Weeks

A good week doesn’t mean you’ve “made it.”

It means you followed your process — for a few days.

👉 Reframe the win:

  • Celebrate execution, not just outcomes.
  • Stay humble. Stay dangerous.
  • Remember: Consistency is a season, not a sunny afternoon.

Mantra: “One week doesn’t define me. Neither does one bad one.”


2. Cap Your Weekly Losses (No Exceptions)

When you’re emotional, the urge to “win it back” gets toxic fast.

You need a hard weekly stop, like a circuit breaker.

Example:

  • Daily max loss = 2R
  • Weekly max loss = 5R
  • Hit it? Shut it down. No “just one more” trades. No exceptions.

Protect your capital and your confidence.

(Fun fact: professional firms enforce this rule for a reason.)


3. Audit Your Energy, Not Just Your Charts

Trading isn’t just technical. It’s physical and mental too.

Warning signs you’re slipping:

  • Poor sleep
  • Skipped workouts
  • No morning routine
  • Doomscrolling before trading

When the pilot’s tired, it doesn’t matter how good the flight plan is — the plane’s in trouble.

Fix it:
Treat your body and mind like your trading account depends on them. (It does.)


4. Build a “Cold State” Checklist

In the heat of the moment, your brain gets hijacked by emotion.

That’s why you need a Cold State Checklist: a list of rules you commit to before things get wild.

Example:

  • ✅ Trade only during set session hours
  • ✅ Align trades with higher-timeframe bias
  • ✅ Cut risk to 0.5R if on a losing streak
  • ✅ Journal every session

No negotiation. No “gut feel” overrides.

Cold State You makes the rules. Emotional You just follows them.


5. Fall in Love With Boring

Consistency isn’t flashy.
It’s not fireworks and motivational montages.

Real consistency is boring:

  • Same prep
  • Same setups
  • Same risk
  • Same execution

Boring is beautiful.

Boring compounds.

If your trading feels “too exciting,” that’s a warning sign — not a badge of honor.


Final Thoughts

Breaking the “Good Week, Bad Week” cycle isn’t about mastering the market.

It’s about mastering yourself.

If you can do that?

You won’t just survive in this game — you’ll thrive, while everyone else keeps riding emotional rollercoasters into oblivion.

Stay dangerous.

Stay disciplined.

Stay boring.

Filed Under: Back to Basic, blogs

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Best Tools For Traders

Recommend FX Charting

Footer

Recommended FX Charting

Recommended Training

FXSAnalytics
Price Action Course for Professionals

Copyright © 2025 · Affiliate Disclosure · Privacy

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.Ok