Morning Its been a busy 14 months.

June last year I sent a note saying I was moving everything to Substack, and then this list went quiet for fourteen months.

Some of you followed. Most of you didn't, and that's completely fair, because nobody owes a writer a second click on a new platform.

So I'm not going to pretend I've been here all along, and I'm not going to start emailing you off a signup from over a year ago. There's a button at the bottom. If you want this, press it. If you don't, do nothing and you'll never hear from me again.

Everything in between is me making the case.

Equity rows are Friday's close. Re-check all four the morning you send, this is the one block that goes stale.

🧾 I stopped writing about trading and did more of it

Then I published every single trade.

86 closed trades. 39 of them losers. Nine months, start to finish.

It's one public page. Entry, stop, target, exit and result on every line, exported from my journal rather than typed up afterwards from memory. The worst loss is shown as prominently as the best win, because a record that's only ever green isn't a record, it's an advert.

I'm not going to quote you a return in this email. Go and read the page and decide for yourself.

The first grew revenue more than 450% year on year, posted a 40% margin, and signed supply deals with some of the largest technology companies on earth. Its share price sits about 30% below where it traded in June.

The second missed its earnings estimate. Fell on the day. It has gone up more or less every week since.

I hold both. Neither is a mistake, and the reason has almost nothing to do with the companies.

A share price already contains an expectation. By the time a company reports, thousands of people have positioned on what they think the number will be, and all of that guesswork is inside the price before a word is published. So the market isn't asking "was that good?" It's asking "was that better than what we already paid for?"

The Desk Take: Good news and a rising share price are related, but they are not the same event. The distance between them is where most earnings-day losses live.

⚖️ Same money in two positions is not the same risk twice

The Desk Take: Deciding whether a trend is intact feels like skill. Deciding how much to buy feels like admin, so it gets done last and in a hurry. But the first decision only decides whether you take the trade. The second decides whether you survive being wrong, and you will be wrong regularly.

🧮 "Down 3%" tells you almost nothing

If your stop sits 4% below your entry, being down 3% means you're three quarters of the way to being wrong and the trade is nearly dead.

If your stop sits 20% below your entry, the same 3% is noise and the trade hasn't really started.

Same number on the screen. Two completely different situations.

Divide the price move by the distance from your entry to your stop. That single figure is comparable across every instrument, every timeframe and every price you'll ever trade.

The Desk Take: Stop measuring in percent and start measuring in units of your own risk. It's the cheapest upgrade available to a retail account and it costs nothing but the arithmetic.

📓 Not a trade. Two lines.

For every position you're holding right now, write down two things: how far the price is from your stop, and how hard that instrument typically moves in a day.

If any position is both close to its stop and one of your biggest, you've just found the thing most likely to hurt you this month. And you found it on a quiet Sunday instead of on the day it happens.

Do you want this or not?

That's the letter. Free, roughly weekly, no tips and no levels, just the mechanics of how this works and what I get wrong.

If you want it, press the button. One click, that's the whole thing.

If you don't, do nothing at all. You won't hear from me again and I'll take you off the list myself in a fortnight. No unsubscribe to hunt for, no hard feelings, and genuinely, thanks for signing up in the first place.

Yes, keep me on the list

The paid letter and the live board

Twice a week: the market read, the individual names, and the levels behind them, plus the board they sit on. $29 a month, or $199 a year on the launch offer, about 55c a day.

The journal that does the risk maths in this email for you, so you're not working out R on a napkin, is 20% off through the link below, no code needed.

The trade I keep re-entering after it stops me out, why that isn't averaging down, and the one rule that separates the two.

Hit reply and tell me whether your positions are all roughly the same size, and whether that was a decision or a habit. I read every one.

Educational analysis, not financial advice.