You took far more trades than you planned to

At the end of the day the number surprises you. Not because you have forgotten the trades, but because you never counted them while they were happening. Each one had a reason at the time. The reasons were all different, which is exactly why they never added up to a decision about how many.

Why nobody notices the count

A trade is a decision you make once. The number of trades is a decision nobody makes at all. No screen shows it to you while the day is running, and there is no point in the session where the terminal asks whether this is the ninth or the nineteenth.

The gap between them shrinks as the day goes on, too. The first one takes a while to decide. By the afternoon the order window is familiar, the hand is quick, and placing one costs almost nothing in the moment. Each order does carry its own charges, and those are the one part of this you can total exactly from your own records.

And the count has no natural stopping point. A plan about what you will trade says nothing about when you are finished. Unless the number was decided before the day started, the day decides it. In your own records it looks like this.

• You could not say how many trades you had taken until you looked.
• The number for the day is more than double the number you would have given in the morning.
• The gaps between your orders get shorter as the session goes on.
• Several of them were in contracts you had not looked at before that day.
• You stopped because the session ended, not because you had reached anything.
• You have a number you would call your usual day. Your trade book does not have many days like it.

Counting it from your own order history

Download thirty days of your trade book. Count entries per day, and where one entry filled in several parts, count it once. That gives you a row of thirty numbers. Write down the highest, the lowest, and the one in the middle.

Then, if you had set yourself a number before any of those days began, count how many days came in above it. That fraction is the whole exercise. The site has no number to offer here and will not suggest one.

The charges are separate arithmetic and they are exact. Your charges statement and your contract notes carry the figure for each order. Add up the ones in those thirty days and you have what the count itself cost you, before anything the trades did.