You are already in before you decide where to get out

The order fills and you are in. Where you get out is still an open question. You will watch it, you will see how it behaves, you will know when the time comes. Nothing on the screen tells you a decision is missing, because the position looks exactly the same as one that had an exit decided an hour ago. The difference shows up later, in the minute the trade is moving against you and the number you are choosing is no longer a line on a chart. It is money, some of it is already gone, and you are the one who has to say the word.

Why it happens in this order

The entry has a clock on it. The exit does not. The price is moving now, the trade is in front of you now. If you stop for two minutes to work out where you would get out, the entry you wanted may not be there. So the entry gets made first and the exit gets put off.

There is a second reason and it is quieter. Deciding the exit first means saying the trade can go wrong, right when you are most sure it will go right. Nobody likes doing that.

Once you are in, that number is not a line on a chart any more. It is an amount you would be agreeing to lose, and agreeing to it feels like choosing it. If you have moved a stop after placing it, your own order history shows which way it went. Each change sits there with its own time. In your own trades it shows up in a handful of recognisable moments.

• You placed the entry and then went looking at the chart for somewhere to put the stop.
• Your exit number changed while the trade was open, and it only ever moved one way.
• You can say what you paid for the position. You cannot say what you were willing to lose on it.
• The trade ended because you could not watch it any more, not because anything you had decided had been reached.
• You squared off in the last few minutes of the session with no plan to, because the session was ending.
• You have a number you would give if someone asked. It is not the number in your order book.

Counting it from your own order history

Unfilled orders and changes to orders usually live only in today's order book, and that clears at the end of the session. Your trade book for past days will not carry them. So run this one forward rather than backward. For your next ten trades, note the time your entry filled and the time the SL went in, straight from the order book the same day. If your broker gives you a downloadable order report that covers past days, use that instead.

If the SL went in within a minute of the fill, or it went in attached to the entry where your broker offers that, the trade had an exit decided. An SL placed before the entry filled is not an exit on a position, it is a second fresh order, so do not count that one as a yes. The order can take whatever form yours takes: an SL, an SL-M, or a standing order your broker keeps for you. Write the tally as a fraction. Six out of ten, two out of ten, whatever yours is.

Then take only the trades that had one of those orders on them, and ask how many were moved after they were placed. Write that fraction over the number of trades that had one, not over ten. The order detail usually shows each change as its own row with its own time.