How to Review Your Trades Weekly: A Filled Sample Sheet

What a Real Weekly Trade Review Looks Like

Most traders skip the review or do a vague one in their head. A real weekly review is a single sheet, filled in with your actual trades, that lets you see in five minutes whether your edge is working. The point is not to feel good or bad about the week. The point is to turn a week of decisions into a few hard numbers you can compare against last week and the week before. In Indian markets this matters even more because your gross profit and your net profit can be very different once STT, brokerage and other statutory charges are removed.

This guide is built around one filled sample sheet for a single trading week, Monday to Friday, covering a mix of Nifty options, a Bank Nifty option, an intraday equity trade in Reliance and a short delivery swing in HDFC Bank. We then calculate win rate, average win, average loss, profit factor, expectancy and the cost drag, showing the arithmetic for each. You can rebuild this exact sheet in any spreadsheet or inside a trading journal app, and reuse it every weekend.

The Filled Sample Weekly Review Sheet

Below is a completed sheet for one illustrative week. Each row is one closed trade. Quantity for options is shown in number of lots and the underlying lot size, since on the NSE a Nifty lot is 65 units and a Bank Nifty lot is 30 units. The Gross P and L column is price difference times total quantity. The Net P and L column is gross minus all charges. These numbers are illustrative and are only here to demonstrate the calculation method.

Trade 5 is a delivery position bought earlier and closed this week at a loss, included to show how a swing trade sits in the same review. The charges column is rounded and illustrative. For options the dominant cost is STT on the sell side, brokerage and exchange transaction charges, plus 18 percent GST on brokerage and exchange charges, plus a small SEBI turnover fee and stamp duty on the buy side. The exact figure always comes from your contract note.

Step One: Separate Winners From Losers

Reading down the Net P and L column, the winners are Trade 1 at 5,235, Trade 3 at 1,020 and Trade 4 at 14,770. The losers are Trade 2 at minus 3,900 and Trade 5 at minus 16,420. So out of five closed trades, three were winners and two were losers. Always classify by net, not gross, because a trade that is barely green on price can flip red after costs, especially small intraday scalps.

• Total trades this week: 5
• Winners: 3 (Trades 1, 3, 4) with net gains of 5,235, 1,020 and 14,770
• Losers: 2 (Trades 2, 5) with net losses of 3,900 and 16,420
• Gross winnings total: 5,235 + 1,020 + 14,770 = 21,025
• Gross losses total: 3,900 + 16,420 = 20,320

Net profit for the week is 21,025 minus 20,320, which equals 705 rupees. Notice how thin that is. The week felt like a winner because three of five trades were green and one trade made nearly fifteen thousand, but a single oversized loss on the HDFC Bank delivery almost wiped out the entire week. This is exactly the kind of truth a filled review sheet forces you to see.

Step Two: Calculate Win Rate, Average Win and Average Loss

Win rate is winners divided by total trades. Here that is 3 divided by 5, which is 0.60, or 60 percent. Average win is total net winnings divided by number of winners: 21,025 divided by 3, which is about 7,008 rupees. Average loss is total net losses divided by number of losers: 20,320 divided by 2, which is 10,160 rupees.

This pairing is the heart of the review. A 60 percent win rate sounds strong, but your average loss of 10,160 is larger than your average win of 7,008. That mismatch is the real risk. If your losers are consistently bigger than your winners, a normal losing streak can do serious damage even with a high win rate. The fix is usually tighter stop losses and right sizing positions, not finding more winners.

Step Three: Profit Factor and Expectancy

Profit factor is gross winnings divided by gross losses. Here it is 21,025 divided by 20,320, which is about 1.03. Anything above 1.0 means the week made money, but 1.03 is barely above breakeven. A healthy system usually sits above 1.5 over many trades. One thin week is not a verdict, but if your profit factor hovers near 1.0 week after week, your edge is too small to survive costs and variance.

Expectancy tells you the average rupees you can expect per trade. The formula is win rate times average win, minus loss rate times average loss. Here that is 0.60 times 7,008, minus 0.40 times 10,160. That is 4,205 minus 4,064, which equals about 141 rupees per trade. Positive expectancy means the method makes money on average, but at 141 rupees per trade your edge is fragile and easily erased by a few oversized losses or higher costs.

• Profit factor: gross wins / gross losses = 21,025 / 20,320 = 1.03
• Expectancy: (0.60 x 7,008) minus (0.40 x 10,160) = 4,205 minus 4,064 = about 141 per trade
• Reading: positive but thin. The edge survives only if average loss is brought down
• Action for next week: cap any single loss near the average win size so one bad trade cannot erase the week

Step Four: Measure the Cost Drag You Cannot Ignore

In Indian markets, costs are not a footnote, they are part of your edge. Add the charges column from the sample sheet: 165 plus 150 plus 60 plus 430 plus 520, which is 1,325 rupees in total charges for the week. Against a net profit of just 705, that means costs were nearly twice your take home profit. If you had paid zero costs your week would have been about 2,030 instead of 705. That single fact should change how often you trade.

The biggest statutory cost in options is Securities Transaction Tax, charged on the sell side. STT on options is 0.1 percent of the premium on the sell side, and STT on futures is 0.02 percent on the sell side, both at the rates effective since October 2024. Intraday equity carries STT of 0.025 percent on the sell side, while delivery equity carries 0.1 percent on both buy and sell. On top of STT you pay brokerage, NSE transaction charges, 18 percent GST on the brokerage and transaction charges, stamp duty on the buy side and a tiny SEBI turnover fee. A frequent options scalper can lose a meaningful share of gross profit to these layers, which is why turnover discipline often matters more than finding one more setup.

Step Five: Tag the Why Behind Each Trade

Numbers tell you what happened. Tags tell you why. For each row, add a short reason for entry, a reason for exit and one behaviour tag. In the sample week, Trade 5, the HDFC Bank delivery loss of 16,420, was tagged as a plan violation: the original stop was meant to be near 1,640 but the position was held through it hoping for a bounce. That single tag is more valuable than the loss itself, because it points to a fixable habit rather than bad luck.

• Setup tag: trend continuation, breakout, reversal, news reaction, expiry day theta play
• Discipline tag: followed plan, moved stop, oversized, revenge trade, exited early in fear
• Emotion note: calm, hesitant, fear of missing out, frustrated after the prior loss
• Market context: trending day, choppy range, gap open, high India VIX, event day such as RBI policy or budget

When you sort a quarter of these tagged rows, patterns jump out. You might find that nearly all your large losses share the moved stop tag, or that your expiry day option buys lose to time decay more often than they win. That is the difference between a journal that just records and a journal that actually changes your behaviour.

Step Six: A Worked Options Example With Costs

Take Trade 1 from the sheet in detail so you can see the full math. You bought 2 lots of the Nifty 24500 weekly call at a premium of 112.00 and sold at 148.00. Nifty lot size is 65, so total quantity is 2 times 75, which is 150 units. The price gain is 148.00 minus 112.00, which is 36.00 points. Gross profit is 36.00 times 150, which is 5,400 rupees.

Now the costs, illustratively. STT on options is 0.15 percent of the sell side premium value. Sell side value is 148.00 times 130, which is 19,240, and 0.15 percent of that is about 29 rupees. Add discount broker flat brokerage of about 40 rupees for two legs, NSE option transaction charges and 18 percent GST on brokerage plus transaction charges, a small SEBI fee and buy side stamp duty. Rounded, total charges land near 90 rupees, leaving net profit of about 4,590. This is why the review must always use net. The same 36 point move on a single lot of 65 units would have made a gross 2,340, and proportionally similar charges would still apply per the contract note.

How Indian Taxes Shape Your Review Records

Your weekly review is also the raw material for your tax return, so keep the categories clean. F&O trading is treated as non speculative business income and is taxed at your applicable income tax slab rate, not at a flat capital gains rate. Intraday equity, like the Reliance trade, is speculative business income and is also taxed at slab rates but kept as a separate bucket. Delivery equity, like the HDFC Bank position, is capital gains: short term capital gains if held up to one year are taxed at 20 percent, and long term capital gains above 1.25 lakh in a financial year are taxed at 12.5 percent, at the rates effective since the 2024 budget.

Because these buckets carry different rules, your sheet should label every row by tax category. STT and other transaction charges on business income trades, F&O and intraday, can generally be claimed as business expenses, which is another reason to record costs precisely. None of this is personal tax advice. Verify the current rules and your own situation with a qualified chartered accountant and the official income tax and SEBI sources before filing.

Turn the Review Into Two or Three Concrete Actions

A review with no action is just bookkeeping. From the sample week, the data points to clear fixes. Average loss of 10,160 is bigger than average win of 7,008, and one delivery trade with a moved stop nearly erased the week. So the actions almost write themselves: cap single trade loss near the average win, never widen a stop once placed, and reduce position size on the delivery swing that ran past its plan. Keep the list short. Two or three changes you actually apply beat ten you forget.

• Set a hard maximum loss per trade near 7,000, the current average win, so no single trade can erase a week
• Never move a stop loss further away once the trade is live; the HDFC Bank loss came from exactly this
• Cut option buying on the day before weekly expiry unless the setup is strong, to reduce theta bleed
• Track costs as a line item every week and aim to keep total charges well under your net profit

Next weekend, open last week's sheet beside the new one. Did average loss shrink? Did profit factor move above 1.5? Did the moved stop tag disappear? Reviewing the review is how a journal compounds into a real edge over months rather than staying a pile of records.

Common Mistakes That Make Reviews Useless

The most common failure is reviewing gross profit and ignoring costs, which paints a falsely rosy picture in a market where STT and fees are real. The second is recording only the trades that worked, which quietly deletes the lessons. The third is keeping no behaviour tags, so every loss looks like bad luck instead of a repeatable mistake. The fourth is mixing F and O, intraday and delivery in one undifferentiated blob, which ruins both your analysis and your tax records.

• Reviewing gross instead of net, hiding the true cost drag
• Logging only winners, or backfilling from memory days later
• No setup or discipline tags, so patterns stay invisible
• Mixing F&O, intraday and delivery without labels
• Changing the whole strategy after one thin or one great week instead of acting on the multi week trend

Sources and Further Reading

For authoritative data and current rules, refer to Zerodha Varsity, the NSE for contract specifications and charges, and SEBI Investor Education. Always confirm current STT rates, lot sizes, brokerage and tax rules on the official source before you trade. Every rupee figure on this page is illustrative and for teaching the method only, not a tip or a promise of returns.

Sources and Further Reading

For authoritative data and further reading on this topic, refer to Zerodha Varsity, Investopedia and SEBI Investor Education. Always confirm current rules, rates and contract specifications on the official source before you trade.