Video: DO THIS To Become An Elite Trader – Jean-Francois Boucher
Creator: Etienne Crete – Desire To TRADE
Original Video: Watch the original video
Difficulty: Intermediate
The Big Idea
A useful trading review ends with a change you can observe. Listing losses, blaming yourself, or promising to be more disciplined does not close the loop. You need to identify the behavior that affected execution, change one part of the process, and measure whether the change helped.
In this training, Jean-Francois Boucher describes a periodic reset for experienced traders whose execution is falling short of an assumed existing edge. His worksheet connects performance, rule violations, emotional state, and practical distractions. The lesson is broader than scalping: make your review specific enough to guide the next decision.
The assumption matters. Poor results can come from inconsistent execution, a weak strategy, changing market conditions, or a combination. A review should investigate those possibilities instead of presuming that discipline alone will restore profitability.
Build a Snapshot Before Choosing the Explanation
The source begins with a compact performance summary: recent P&L, current drawdown, risk per trade, weekly rule violations, and the trader’s emotional state. Use the same measurement definitions across periods so that changes are meaningful.
| Measure | What to record | What it helps reveal |
|---|---|---|
| Net trading result | Realized results, costs, and separate unrealized exposure | Whether gains survive execution friction |
| Drawdown | Decline from a defined performance-equity peak | How severe the setback is, beyond a single losing day |
| Risk per attempt | Planned dollar risk, actual quantity, and actual loss | Whether losses reflect the planned exposure |
| Rule adherence | Specific violations and eligible decision count | Whether behavior is improving as activity changes |
| Operating conditions | Sleep, mood, interruptions, session, and instrument | Where execution becomes difficult |
A raw violation count needs a denominator. Two violations in twenty decisions is 10%; two in five is 40%. Neither number tells the whole story, but treating them as identical because both equal “two” obscures an important change.
Write down what qualifies as a violation before reviewing winners and losers. Otherwise, losing trades tend to attract criticism while profitable departures from the plan escape notice.
Separate Trading Performance from Cash Movements
The opening discussion describes withdrawals disrupting the appearance of an account curve and trades spread across multiple accounts. That makes reconciliation part of the review, not an optional accounting detail.
For an original example, suppose an account starts a period at $10,000, ends at $9,700, and has a $1,000 withdrawal with no deposit. Its ending balance is lower, but the dollar change attributable to activity is $9,700 − $10,000 + $1,000 = $700, assuming all other adjustments are accounted for.
That is a dollar reconciliation, not automatically a comparable percentage return. The timing of deposits and withdrawals matters when measuring returns. For several accounts, list each account and eliminate transfers between them from the combined external cash flows.
Keep the full history, including closed or failed accounts and overlapping positions. An attractive curve from one account can conceal losses or correlated exposure elsewhere. Report balance and equity consistently; an equity view includes open-position changes that a realized-only balance can miss.
Why a High Win Rate Still Needs a Loss Review
Boucher mentions approximately 90% profitable trades and a profit factor near 2.0. Those are speaker-reported figures, not an independently verified record. The supplied excerpt does not establish a reconciled, complete multi-account sample.
Profit factor is total winning P&L divided by the absolute total losing P&L, with cost treatment stated. In a hypothetical sample of 100 trades with 90 wins, ten losses, and profit factor 2, the relationship is:
90 × average win ÷ (10 × average loss) = 2.
It follows that the average loss is 4.5 times the average win. For example, ninety $20 wins total $1,800, while ten $90 losses total $900. Profit factor is 2, yet one ordinary loss erases several wins. Different cost treatment changes the net comparison.
The calculation does not disprove the reported results. It shows why win rate should sit alongside average loss, maximum loss, drawdown, exposure, and the full distribution of outcomes.
Translate “Failure States” into Observable Behavior
The training groups execution problems into ego, fear, revenge or recovery trading, fatigue, and analysis paralysis. These are useful prompts rather than clinical diagnoses. A trader may exhibit several at different times.
| Review category | Observable example | Possible process adjustment to test |
|---|---|---|
| Need to be right | Moving an invalidation point after price reaches it | Record the original invalidation before entry and every later change |
| Fear | Skipping a qualifying setup or exiting without the specified condition | Use smaller predefined exposure and record missed qualifying opportunities |
| Recovery pressure | Increasing size or relaxing entry rules after a loss | Predefine a pause or session stopping rule |
| Fatigue or divided attention | Wrong quantity, missed exit, or repeated interruptions | Restrict execution to a period when monitoring is practical |
| Over-analysis | Adding new requirements after the setup already qualifies | Use a fixed checklist and record when its conditions became available |
These adjustments are examples to investigate, not universal prescriptions. Reducing size can make execution easier, but it does not validate the strategy. Cutting an instrument list can reduce cognitive load, but it can also reduce diversification or opportunities.
Ownership Without Pretending to Control the Market
The source emphasizes taking responsibility rather than automatically blaming news, technology, or the platform. That is useful when it directs attention toward decisions you can change. It becomes misleading if interpreted as complete control over outcomes.
Separate three elements: what happened externally, what preparation was possible, and what response you chose. A connection failure can be real. The review can still ask whether backup access existed, whether orders were confirmed, and whether the position was appropriate for the available monitoring.
A market gap is not a character flaw. Repeatedly enlarging exposure after a gap is a decision to examine. This distinction preserves accountability without inventing control over prices, execution, or random sequences.
The Thursday-Morning Lesson: Time-Slice the Journal
One anecdote describes a trader whose poor Thursday-morning results coincided with responsibility for getting children ready for school. The useful insight is that calendar patterns can represent operating conditions rather than market effects.
To investigate a similar issue, record exact times, interruptions, trade opportunities, rule adherence, and results. Compare interrupted and uninterrupted sessions. Ask whether errors occur more often during the competing obligation and whether the same pattern appears on other days.
Do not conclude that Thursday itself is untradable from a few losses. News, instrument selection, volatility, and sample size may also differ. A practical next experiment could move the execution window or avoid new entries while attention is divided, then observe a later sample.
Closing the entry window still leaves responsibility for open positions. Define their management before stepping away; an alert or stop order is not a guarantee of a particular exit price.
Make a Reset a Versioned Change
The speaker describes making risk rules firmer and walking away after a loss rather than trying to recover immediately. A reset is strongest when its commitments exist before the next trade, not when an uncomfortable move forces an improvised rule.
Write the new rule, its effective date, and what it replaces. If you change a stop method or size policy, identify the new version in the journal. Comparing trades under different policies as though they belonged to one stable strategy can hide the reason results changed.
Choose one main operational bottleneck. For example: “During school preparation, I will submit no new entries. Existing positions retain their specified management.” That is measurable. “I will become an elite trader” is not.
The video mentions relocation and repeated entries under different scalping methods but does not supply enough rules to reconstruct them. A fresh entry still creates exposure, costs, and a new decision. Calling it relocation does not remove the need for a total-risk limit or a clear invalidation.
A Four-Step Feedback Loop
- Observe: Capture the planned setup, original risk, actual orders, interruptions, and net outcome without rewriting the entry rationale.
- Classify: Separate a rule-compliant loss, an execution violation, a technical problem, and a strategy question. Several can apply to one trade.
- Change: Select one specific adjustment and define how success will be measured.
- Recheck: Evaluate a later sample for adherence, costs, exposure, and net results before adopting another change.
Use daily reviews to preserve facts, weekly reviews to find recurring issues, and periodic resets for larger policy changes. The source suggests quarterly or annual recalibration; the appropriate cadence depends on the strategy and available evidence.
A behavioral improvement may appear before a financial improvement. Conversely, several profitable days can occur while violations worsen. Keep both measures visible. Consistent execution is necessary for evaluating a system, but it does not guarantee that losses will resolve themselves.
Three Questions for the Next Review
- Is the edge still supported? Compare rule-compliant trades across later periods, regimes, and realistic costs. Avoid assuming that every setback is psychological.
- Which behavior contributes most to avoidable exposure? Measure increased quantity, delayed exits, and extra entries rather than choosing the most emotionally memorable mistake.
- Did the intervention help? Check whether the targeted behavior changed without shifting the problem elsewhere, such as fewer entries but larger positions.
As FINRA’s guidance on frequent intraday trading emphasizes, frequent activity carries loss risk and costs that can erode returns. Include those costs in the review rather than treating gross trading gains as the finished result.
Final Takeaway
A performance reset is a feedback process: reconcile the record, identify the execution problem, make one explicit change, and evaluate what happens next. Take ownership of decisions you can influence while recognizing uncertainty in outcomes. The goal is a clearer, more reproducible process whose financial merits can be assessed honestly.
Risk Disclosure: This material is for educational and research purposes only and is not financial or investment advice. Trading can result in substantial losses, and leveraged trading can lose more than the original investment. Backtests and retrospective comparisons are hypothetical, depend heavily on their assumptions, and cannot reproduce every aspect of live execution. Commissions, spreads, slippage, liquidity, gaps, order behavior, market regime changes, and discretionary decision-making can materially affect real-world results. Journaling, discipline, reduced size, and historical performance do not guarantee profitability or prevent every loss.
This article is an independent educational companion to the video and is not affiliated with, sponsored by, endorsed by, or authorized by Etienne Crete, Desire To TRADE, or Jean-Francois Boucher.