Can you believe we’re nearly through the first half of 2026?
With the first half of the year behind us, it’s time to look back on the trading goals you made at the beginning of the year and see if you need to make changes to your goals, trading processes, or strategies.
The goal isn’t to beat yourself up over every missed setup, revenge trade, or “I swear this one is different” moment.
The goal is to figure out what your trading has been teaching you while you were busy staring at candles.
Here are some tips to get you started:
Open the journal. No, really.
Your account balance tells you what happened. Your trading journal tells you why.
If you don’t have one, your future self is already judging you. Boo.
If you do have one, don’t just look at wins and losses. Dig into patterns.
Which setups consistently made money? Which ones drained the account like a tiny vampire? Did your best trades come from your actual plan, or from entries you later dressed up as intentional?
Then go deeper: Did you perform better in trending conditions or choppy ones? Did you enter with a clear thesis, or were you just reacting to whatever candle looked loudest? Were your losses normal business costs, or emotional decisions with a chart attached?
Give yourself a pat on the back if none of the 5 common newbie mistakes made it to your list.
Remember that your trading patterns are also your behavior patterns. If your biggest losses came after frustration, boredom, or the desperate need to “make it back,” the problem probably isn’t your strategy. It’s your state management.
Review the market you were actually trading
Once you know what you did, look at what the market did, and whether you were actually paying attention.
H1 2026 was no sleepy stroll. The Fed held in June but kept traders guessing over sticky inflation and another possible hike. The ECB raised rates. The BOE held, though its split vote showed inflation worries weren’t gone. The BOJ mattered again beyond carry trade jokes, while the RBA, RBNZ, BOC, and SNB each wrestled with their own inflation and growth tradeoffs.Oil stayed noisy too, with Middle East tensions keeping inflation risk, commodity currencies, safe havens, and bond yields in play. Then there was AI, swinging between “this changes everything” and “but can it pay for itself?” When optimism lifted equities, high beta currencies caught a bid. When valuation anxiety showed up, safe havens got attention.
The real question isn’t whether you saw these headlines. It’s whether you traded like you understood them. Did you adjust when correlations shifted? Did you know what the market was reacting to that day?
Plenty of traders review entries and exits but ignore the environment. That’s like blaming your umbrella for the typhoon.
Make adjustments grounded in evidence, not emotion
Here’s the awkward part: the goals you set in January may not suit the market you’re now in. That’s the market changing and you needing to adapt, which is different from quitting.
If your goal was aggressive account growth but volatility kept you on the wrong side of sudden moves, the smarter H2 target might be capital preservation and cleaner execution. If you planned to trade more trends but your pairs spent months chopping sideways, the real skill to develop is knowing when to sit on your hands.
Process goals age better than money goals anyway. “I will only take trades matching my written criteria” beats “I will make X pips” every time, because you can control one of those.
Write down the concrete behavior changes you want: cut one low-quality setup, honor your daily loss limit, review every trade within 24 hours. Not sexy, but neither is flossing, and both save you pain later.
Build a second-half playbook, not a prediction
You don’t need to forecast every headline. You just need to prepare for the types of markets that could show up.
Write down your top three setups, your weakest setup to cut, your max daily loss, and the conditions that tell you to trade smaller. Traders plan attacks. Professionals also plan retreats.
The gap between the trader you planned to be and the one who actually clicked the button — that’s what this review is for.
Sometimes that gap is strategy. Sometimes it’s the market. Usually, it’s a messy cocktail of strategy, market conditions, and trader behavior.
Keeping trading resolutions is always challenging after January. But remember that you made them for a reason.
The good news is you still have half a year.
With a little reminder and a few adjustments, you’ll get right back on track to the goal of becoming a consistently profitable currency trader or investor.
Dr. Pipslow’s mid-year check is really about one thing: the gap between the trader you planned to be and the one who actually clicked the button. Premium members can read our lesson:
📖 Sticking to Your Trading Plan
Reading this helps you understand why discipline is harder than strategy, the specific execution habits that cause plan drift, and how to close the gap between your written trading rules and your actual trades.
And if you’re not a Premium subscriber yet, now’s a good time to sign up.
With Babypips Premium, you get full access to School of Pipsology lessons that help you understand not just what your trading rules should be, but how to actually follow them when fear, impatience, or a “this one is different” moment shows up.
