"If you fail to plan, you plan to fail."

MISSION

What is you trading missing statement?

What is your real motivation behind your trading?

Is it for your children education? or for passive income for you retirement?

GOALS and OBJECTIVES

What are your trading goals and objectives?

RULES

What are your trading rules you need to stick on. This may be difficult to define, but with more experience, you will get it. Read more books about real, successful traders.

What are trading tools do you use?

What are trading software do you used?

How you screen stocks in stock market?

How do you use fundamental analysis to pick stocks?

How do you enter/exit market?

What Technical analysis (indicators) do you use?

How many lot you SHOULD buy per trade?

This is important aspect of trading

What are your physiological environment in trading?

What are emotional challenges do you have?

TRADING ROUTINES

What are you daily/weekly/monthly routines?

Do you keep trading journal?

MISTAKES

What are your mistakes?

How does it affect your overall trading?

Do you record down every mistake?

How to prevent it from happening again?

Ok, I am very sure you want to see an example, so here you go. Please note that this is just an example. This is not (fully) my trading plan, I adapted this example to better illustrate the business plan template.

MISSION

To trade well and right!

To be able to have different source of income

To act as passive income for my retirement!

GOALS and OBJECTIVES

To improve my EDGE

To make ZERO mistakes

To improve my automation of trading journal

RULES

I am not a value investor

I do not apply Dollar Cost Averaging

I must follow my system, not following means a mistake

I do not hold stocks more that 3 months

... (the list goes on)

STRATEGY (METHOD)

I use Yahoo Finance to get a stock quote

I use Amibroker/Metatrader/NexusChart for my technical analysis

I use Microsoft Excel for my trading performance monitoring

... (list down all you stock trading software)

Stock screener is done by ... (my Online Stock Screener)

The screening is based fundamental analysis (earnings, ROE, P/E, etc)

My watchlist consist of (stock A, stock B, etc)

My entry strategy is based on (Support resistance, Fibo, EMA, etc)

My exit strategy is based on (Support resistance, Fibo, EMA, etc)

My cut loss is at 8%

Every time I buy stocks, maximum I can buy is xxx shares.

Many different way to calculate (learn Position Sizing here)

I buy stocks with random expectation

Everything happens in stock market is RANDOM

I believe in "Five Fundamental Truth" about trading

... etc

TRADING ROUTINES

Download EOD everyday

Update my trading journal (start creating Stock Tracking Spreadsheet)

Read financial reports

Read news

MISTAKES

Write down all my mistakes (not following the above business plan)

Try to come up with your own business plan based on this simple business plan template and share it with me!

Before you jump directly to stock market and start buying stocks, you need to have a proper. Stock investing/trading is just like any other business, you can't expect yourself to right away buy stocks and earn profit. Plan properly!This business plan template is what I used after adapting to so many books I read . I save this trading plan in my Evernote, so when there is time to spare while waiting for a bus or waiting for food, I would read this business plan just to refresh about what are the rules I set up when I started this business.So, if you do not have a WRITTEN Business Plan, then this is a good time to get a paper and start jotting down. The following outline is a simple example and of course you can always tweak it. This list works for me and hopefully will also work for you.