How to find your biggest money leak: time of day, holding time and revenge trades
How to slice your trades by time of day, holding time, trades after losses, market and tags to find where you give money back, then test and plug the leak with one rule.
Most traders who lose money aren't losing everywhere. They're making money on most of their trades and handing it back in one place: one hour of the day, one kind of trade, one habit after losses. That place is a leak. Find it and plug it, and you often don't need a better strategy at all. You need to stop doing one thing.
What counts as a leak
A leak is a group of your trades that loses money again and again, that you can describe in one sentence and avoid with one rule. “Trades after 11:30” is a leak. “Bad trades” isn't. To trust it, the group needs enough trades (at least 10, more is better) and it should lose in most weeks, not just one.
Slice your trades one way at a time
Export your trades, then split them by one thing at a time and add up the net P&L of each group. These are the slices that find most leaks:
- Time of day. By hour, or by 30 minutes around the open. Many day traders make their money in the first hour or two and give it back at lunch. See the best time of day to trade futures.
- Holding time. Under 1 minute, 1 to 5 minutes, 5 to 15, and over 15. Very short losers often mean impulsive entries; very long ones often mean a stop that wasn't respected.
- After losses. Trades taken after two losses in a day, next to all the others. This is tilt, and it's the most common leak of all.
- Market. Each market you trade. A second market you trade “on the side” is a frequent leak.
- Setup and mistake tags. If you tag your trades, each tag's net P&L tells you which setups pay and what each mistake costs.
- Day of the week and size, if you vary either.
An example: time of day
| Time (New York) | Trades | Net P&L |
|---|---|---|
| 9:30–10:30 | 42 | +$1,860 |
| 10:30–11:30 | 25 | +$340 |
| 11:30–2:00 | 31 | −$1,420 |
| 2:00–4:00 | 9 | −$180 |
This trader made +$600 for the month. Without the lunch hours, they'd have made +$2,020. The 31 lunchtime trades are the leak. The 9 afternoon trades lost too, but 9 trades isn't enough to be sure yet. Watch them.
The cut test
For each leak you find, work out your P&L without it. The leak that makes the biggest difference is the one to fix first. Then write one rule that removes it: “no new trades after 11:30,” “two losses ends the day,” “only NQ.” A rule you can check with a yes or no is a rule you'll actually keep.
Don’t overfit
Slice your trades enough ways and something will always look bad by chance. Three losing Thursdays don't make Thursdays a leak. Stick to the slices above, need at least 10 trades, and check that the leak shows up in most weeks. If it disappears when you look at another month, it was noise.
Find yours in seconds
The free trading report card reads your trade file and puts your biggest leak first, with an hour-by-hour chart of when you make and lose money and a grade for what you did after losses. In the journal, Insights breaks your trades down by time of day, holding time, setup and mistake.
This article is for education only and isn't financial advice. The example numbers are made up to show the math. Trading futures involves substantial risk of loss.