Setup Compliance

What is Setup Compliance?

Setup compliance measures whether your executed trade matched your predefined criteria. If your setup requires a support bounce with a bullish engulfing candle on the 1-hour chart during London session — did all four conditions exist when you entered? Setup compliance is binary for each criterion: you either met it or you didn't.

Why It's the Most Revealing Metric

Setup compliance separates the performance of your STRATEGY from the performance of your BEHAVIOR. If your compliant trades have a 58% win rate and your non-compliant trades have a 35% win rate, the diagnosis is clear: your strategy works, but your discipline doesn't. No amount of strategy optimization will fix an execution problem.

• High compliance + profitable: Your strategy and discipline are both working
• High compliance + unprofitable: Your strategy needs work, but your discipline is solid
• Low compliance + any result: You can't evaluate your strategy because you're not executing it

Improving Compliance

Use a physical checklist before every trade. Write down each criterion and check them off. If even one box is unchecked, don't take the trade. This simple friction — the 30 seconds it takes to fill out a checklist — is often enough to prevent impulsive entries.