Forex trading plan template (free Excel download)
A free Excel plan with a risk calculator, trade log and weekly review, and a guide to writing rules you can actually check.
Download the free forex trading plan template (.xlsx)
No email address or sign-up needed. It is a plain Excel file that also opens in Google Sheets and LibreOffice. It contains five sheets: a short start page, the plan itself, a position size calculator, a trade log and a weekly review.
What is in the template
| Sheet | What it does |
|---|---|
| Start here | Short instructions and the things to know |
| Plan | Six sections of yellow cells to fill in: goal, markets and sessions, setups, risk, rules around each trade, and review |
| Risk calculator | Lot size from your balance, risk percentage and stop, for USD-quoted pairs and gold |
| Trade log | One row per trade with a Plan followed? drop-down, an R multiple that calculates itself, and three hypothetical example rows to delete |
| Weekly review | Summary numbers pulled from the log, including the result of trades that followed the plan against those that did not, plus eight review questions |
What a forex trading plan has to contain
A plan is a set of decisions you make while calm so that you do not have to make them under pressure. Most plans that fail are missing the parts that can be checked. These are the sections the template asks you to fill in, and why each exists:
| Section | The question it answers | A checkable version |
|---|---|---|
| Goal and honesty | Why am I doing this, and what can I afford to lose? | A maximum amount you can lose without hurting your life |
| Markets and sessions | Where and when do I trade? | A short list of pairs and a time window in broker server time |
| Setups | What exactly do I take? | Entry, stop and target written so that another person could follow them |
| Risk | How much can one trade, one day and one week cost? | A percentage per trade and limits per day and week |
| Before and after a trade | What stops me from breaking the rules? | A checklist and a written action after a loss |
| Review | How will I find out whether it works? | A weekly slot and a recalculation every 50 trades |
A short filled-in example (hypothetical)
| Item | Example |
|---|---|
| Pairs and sessions | EURUSD and GBPUSD, 08:00 to 11:00 server time |
| Setup | Pullback to a prior level on the 15-minute chart, entry on a close back through it, stop beyond the pullback, target the previous high |
| Risk | 1% per trade, at most 3 trades a day, stop for the day at a 3% loss, stop for the week at 6% |
| After a loss | Wait 15 minutes, same size or smaller, no revenge entries |
| Review | Friday, 20 minutes; recalculate everything every 50 trades |
This is an illustration of the layout, not a recommendation of any strategy, session or risk level.
How to write rules that can be checked
- Use numbers and prices, not adjectives. 'Strong trend' cannot be checked. 'Price above the 50-period average on the 4-hour chart' can.
- Write what you will not do. A list of forbidden actions, such as moving a stop further away, is often more useful than a list of entries.
- Give every rule an owner in the log. If a rule has no field in the Trade log, you cannot measure it. Either add a field or drop the rule.
- Keep it short. Ten to fifteen rules you follow beat fifty you ignore.
- Date every change. Put the date and the reason beside any edit, so you can see later which version of the plan produced which results.
Making the risk numbers fit together
| Risk per trade | Losers before you stop | Daily loss limit | Weekly limit if every day hit it |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.5% | 4 | 2% | 10% |
| 1% | 3 | 3% | 15% |
| 2% | 2 | 4% | 20% |
The numbers must agree. A 1% risk with a 1% daily limit ends your day after a single loss, and a 10% daily limit allows ten full losses. Use the risk of ruin calculator to see how your risk per trade affects the chance of a deep drawdown, and the losing streak calculator to see how often a run of losers is normal.
Using the template with a journal
The plan says what you intend. The Trade log says what you did. The gap between them is where the improvement is. After each week, the review sheet shows the net result of trades that followed the plan beside those that did not. If the broken-plan trades lose, the plan is not the problem; if they win, the plan may need revising. Either way you are working from your own numbers.
If you prefer Notion, the Notion trading plan template has a paste-in layout, and the trading checklist template covers the pre-trade questions in detail. If you trade MetaTrader 5, the free MT5 journal template adds a dashboard.
Limits of a spreadsheet plan
- You type every trade. That is the part people stop doing, and a log with gaps misleads you.
- The risk calculator is exact for pairs quoted in USD and for gold on a USD account. Other pairs need the pip value converted first. See the pip value calculator.
- Spread, commission and slippage are not in the lot size.
- A plan cannot guarantee any result. It makes your behaviour measurable.
If typing the trades is the weak link, AI Trading Journal reads your closed MT5 trades and saves each one in your own journal on your PC (with an optional copy in your own Notion workspace) automatically, with a 7-day free trial and a one-time $19.99 price. The template is free whether or not you use it. This page is general education and not trading or investment advice.
From plan to numbers: a worked set of limits (hypothetical)
A plan is easiest to follow when the limits are written as money, not as feelings. Take an invented account of $10,000. The trader decides on 0.5% risk per trade, which is $50, a daily loss limit of 2%, which is $200, a weekly limit of 4%, which is $400, and a monthly pause level of 6%, which is $600. The percentages are examples to show the arithmetic, not recommendations.
| Rule | Percent | Money | What it means in practice |
|---|---|---|---|
| Risk per trade | 0.5% | $50 | Position size is set so the stop costs about $50 |
| Daily loss limit | 2% | $200 | Four full losses end the day, nothing after that |
| Weekly loss limit | 4% | $400 | Two bad days can end the week early |
| Monthly pause level | 6% | $600 | Reaching it triggers a written review before any new trade |
Seeing the four rows together exposes inconsistencies. If you also allow yourself ten trades a day at $50 of risk, the daily limit would be hit by the fifth loser, so the ten-trade allowance is not real. Making the numbers fit is the point of this section; the daily loss limit calculator and the position size calculator do the arithmetic for your own figures.
Turn the plan into a pre-trade checklist
Rules that live only in a document get skipped under pressure. Copy the entry rules into a short checklist that you read before each order. A workable checklist has five to seven yes-or-no lines, for example: is the setup one of my named setups, is the stop placed where the setup says it belongs, does the position size match my planned risk, is a scheduled news release due inside my no-trade window, am I inside today’s loss limit, and is my state calm enough to follow the plan. If any answer is no, there is no trade. The trading checklist template has a longer version you can trim.
Version your plan like a document
Plans should change, but not in the middle of a losing week. Keep a small change log at the bottom of the plan: the date, the one rule you changed, and the reason in one sentence. Allow changes only at a fixed review point, such as the end of the month. This does two things. It stops a bad day from rewriting your rules, and it lets you look back and see which change helped and which one was a reaction. If a rule keeps being broken, the useful question is whether the rule is wrong or the habit is, and the change log is where that answer accumulates.
What to do the day the plan is broken
- Stop trading for the day once the broken rule is noticed, not after one more trade.
- Write down which rule was broken, what the market was doing and how you felt, in three lines.
- Mark the trade as not following the plan in your journal so it can be counted later.
- At the next review, decide whether the rule needs to change or the checklist needs a stronger line. Do not decide on the same day.
The trading discipline rules page and the revenge trading journal page go deeper on that moment.
Checking the plan against real results
A plan is a hypothesis about how you will trade. Your closed trades show whether you did. After a month, count how many trades were inside your risk limit, how many days stayed within the daily loss limit, and how many trades you marked as following the plan. A journal that reads your closed MetaTrader 5 positions, such as AI Trading Journal, gives you the results to count, and you add the plan-followed flag yourself, because the app cannot know what you intended. Compare the profit of plan-following trades with the rest over several months before drawing any conclusion.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a free forex trading plan template in Excel?
What should a forex trading plan include?
How do I know if I follow my plan?
Related guides
- A local trading journal for MT5
- P&L calendar for MT5
- Trade notes, ratings and screenshots
- Trading progress and goals
- Back up your journal and move it to a new PC
- An offline trading journal for Windows
- How to set monthly trading goals
- Import your whole MT5 history
- How to tag trades
- Trade screenshots for your journal
- All trading journal comparisons
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