How to Stop Overtrading
How to stop overtrading — quality bar beats count cap.
Count caps only prevent the worst days. The durable fix is a setup-quality threshold — every trade must clear a personal bar. Decision Score is a per-trade quality gate; Emotion Score catches the drift before it becomes a habit.
The mechanism
Trade fewer setups, not fewer trades.
Reframe the problem. "Trade less" is a count target and behaviourally fragile. "Only trade A-grade setups" is a quality target and behaviourally stable — because it protects a definition rather than rationing a resource.
Decision Score encodes the six-factor definition. Set a personal bar (e.g., only trade setups with score ≥ 3.5/5). Every trade below the bar fails the gate. Emotion Score catches drift when the bar starts to slide.
The weekly check
Sort by score, act on the bottom quintile.
Every Friday, sort the week's trades by Decision Score, look at the bottom fifth, and write one sentence: what factor scored lowest? That factor is the target for the coming week's checklist. Repeat.
Related reading
Continue with the parts that matter to you.
FAQ
Common questions.
Should I cap the number of trades per day?
A count cap prevents the worst days but does not fix the drift. Combine a cap (as safety net) with a per-trade quality bar (as primary defence).
What is the right quality bar?
Personal. Start with Decision Score ≥ 3/5 and tighten to 3.5 or 4 as consistency improves. The bar should be uncomfortable to hit — that is the point.
How is this different from FOMO?
Overtrading is a slow drift below the bar. FOMO is a specific pattern where the entry is chased after the setup already moved. Same family, different sub-pattern.
Further reading
Articles from the EI ALGOS research library
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