After a day like Thursday

If you traded Thursday, you don't need us to describe it. The selling started in AI and chip stocks and spread until every sector closed lower. For the S&P 500, it was the worst day in well over a year.

We're not going to tell you what happens next. We don't know, and nobody else does either. What we can talk about is you, because days like that one leave a mark on how people trade the following week.

Where you might be right now

Most traders come out of a day like Thursday in one of three places.

You got hurt. Maybe a limit broke, or a stop got moved, or one bad trade turned into five. You're replaying it, and part of you wants Monday to fix it.

You held up. Your limits did their job. It still wasn't fun, but you're intact. That's worth noticing, and we'll come back to it.

You sat it out. Now you're watching others talk about the bounce and wondering if you missed something.

All three can push you toward the same mistake on Monday: trading to change how you feel about last week.

Five things to do before Monday

1. Write down what you did, not what you lost. At the worst moment on Thursday, what was your hand doing? Two or three honest sentences are enough. You'll learn more from them than from the P&L figure.
2. Check your mandate. Did your limits hold? If one broke, write down which one and what happened just before. That's information, not a verdict on you.
3. Set Monday's numbers now. Decide your maximum loss and your size for Monday today, while you're calm. If price ranges are wider than usual, the same size carries more risk than it did a month ago. Take that into account when you choose.
4. Name the urge before it shows up. If you lost money, the pull to win it back will probably be strongest in the first hour on Monday. Write the rule for it: if I feel that pull, I stand up for ten minutes. We wrote more about that moment in The 40 seconds after a loss.
5. Step away for a while. Close the charts for part of the weekend. Not because rest is a trading strategy, but because Monday's decisions will be better if Thursday isn't playing on loop.

If you held up

This part matters too. If your limits held on a day like Thursday, that's real evidence that your process works. It's easy to skip that, because a red day is still a red day. Write it down anyway. It's the kind of thing you'll want to remember the next time you're tempted to loosen a rule after a quiet week.

Use Sunday

If you only do one thing this weekend, run the 15-minute Sunday review. It was written for an ordinary week, but it works best after a week like this one.