Everything in this course is raw material; a strategy is what happens when you assemble it into rules precise enough to follow and to test. 'I buy dips in an uptrend' is an idea, not a strategy — it is too vague to execute consistently or to evaluate honestly. The job of this final module is to turn ideas into rules.
What a complete rule set defines
- Market & timeframe — what you trade and on which chart you decide.
- Entry — the exact, objective conditions that must be true (the confluence checklist, made specific).
- Stop — where the idea is invalidated, defined by structure or ATR.
- Target / exit — where you take profit, trail, or how you scale out.
- Risk — the fixed fraction risked per trade, and any daily/weekly loss limit.
- Filters — when you stand aside (no trade in chop, around major news, etc.).
Precise enough to be falsifiable
The test of a good rule is whether two people reading it would take the same trade — and whether you could write it as code. 'Long when the 20 is above the 50, ADX > 25, on a pullback to the 20 that prints a bullish engulfing, stop below the last higher low, target 2R' is a strategy: objective, repeatable, testable. 'Long when it looks strong' is not. Vague rules cannot be backtested, which means you can never know if they have an edge.
Start simple
Resist the urge to bolt on ten conditions. Complex strategies overfit (they describe the past beautifully and fail in the future) and are hard to follow under pressure. A simple rule set with a clear logic, sized sensibly, beats an elaborate one you cannot execute or trust. You can always refine — but only if the base is simple enough to measure in the first place.