Tim Wilcox’s T2W trading plan template was built collaboratively from a Trade2Win forum thread that attracted thousands of contributors.
It runs to around 50 questions across eleven sections, and the value is in actually trying to answer them! Because some that look simple turn out to be anything but.
Do you have the dedication and patience to answer 50 questions? If yes, there’s every chance you can use the same qualities to become a professional trader. If you don’t, maybe trading isn’t for you?
Why do you want to trade, really? What will you do when your broker goes down mid-trade? How many consecutive rule breaks will it take before you stop trading entirely and reassess? These aren’t rhetorical questions. The template expects written answers, specific and unambiguous enough that there’s no room for interpretation in the heat of the moment.
The distinction between risk management and money management is worth dwelling on. Risk management is about cutting losses — stop placement, maximum exposure, position sizing. Money management is about letting profits run — trailing stops, scaling out, adding to winners. Most traders conflate the two. Keeping them separate forces clearer thinking about each.
The time-out rule is also worth taking seriously. Stop trading when total equity drops 5% for short-term traders, 15% for longer-term ones — not to avoid losses, but to break negative momentum before it compounds.
The golden rules in Wilcox’s T2W trading plan template are concise and unambiguous: never average down, never chase losses, always use actual stop orders rather than mental ones, and trade what you see rather than what you think.
Key questions in the T2W trading plan template
- Know yourself. Why do you actually want to trade, and which of your real motivations are likely to work against you under pressure?
- What kind of trader are you? Does the time you can realistically commit match the style you’re choosing?
- What are your risk limits? Maximum loss per trade, maximum portfolio drawdown, and the point at which you stop trading for the day.
- What is your setup, precisely? Can you define it clearly enough that another trader would enter at exactly the same point?
- What are your exit rules? For losses, partial profits, and full position closes — defined in advance, not in the moment.
- What is your pre-market routine? And what conditions would lead you to not trade at all today?
- How will you keep records? Trades, reasons, emotions, and whether you followed the plan — reviewed regularly, not just when things go wrong.
There are 43 more questions in the T2W trading plan template, just as important as these.
