Weekly Risk Review Checklist

A short, regular audit of the week just traded, designed to catch drift in risk and discipline early, while it is still small and cheap to correct.

Weekly Review Checklist: Once a week, step back from individual trades and look at the aggregate: total R for the week, whether you followed your risk rules, how much heat and correlation you are carrying into next week, and whether costs are quietly eroding your edge. The point is to catch discipline drift early, before it compounds into a serious drawdown. This is educational routine, not a signal.

Individual trades are noisy, but a week of them starts to reveal process. The weekly review is a brief, regular audit that catches problems, rising size, creeping correlation, rule-breaking under pressure, while they are still small. It is not about grading profit; a profitable week with broken rules is a warning, and a losing week with clean discipline may be fine. Aggregate the trades you logged in the post-trade reviews.

Review the week's trades

Tally total R for the week, wins and losses in units of risk, rather than focusing on the rupee figure alone.
Count how many trades followed your plan versus how many were impulse, FOMO or revenge trades.
Check whether any single trade risked more than your per-trade limit, and whether size crept up over the week.
Confirm you honoured stops; count any that were widened or ignored, since these are the costliest breaks.
Review your worst trade of the week and confirm the loss was contained to plan, not left to run.
Check total costs for the week, brokerage, STT, fees and slippage, against gross P&L to see the real cost drag.
Note whether your results cluster by day, time or setup, which may reveal a strength or a leak.

Check current exposure

Confirm total portfolio heat on open positions is within your cap heading into next week.
Check for correlation build-up: several positions that would lose together in one adverse move count as one larger bet.
Verify no single instrument or sector has grown into an oversized concentration.
Confirm free margin (SPAN plus exposure) is comfortable, with room for volatility, not running near a margin call.
Note any positions running into next week's expiry or a scheduled event that could gap, and plan for them.
Check liquidity on any option positions you are holding, especially far OTM strikes that may be hard to exit.

Reset for next week

Confirm your account is above any weekly or monthly drawdown limit that would require you to reduce size or stop.
Write down one specific process improvement to carry into next week.
Check the calendar for next week's expiries, results, RBI or macro events that will affect risk.
Reconfirm your per-trade risk limit and portfolio heat cap for the coming week, adjusting only for a deliberate reason.
If the week was emotionally draining or losses mounted, consider reducing size until confidence and clarity return.
Confirm your journal is up to date so the monthly review has clean data to draw on.

Kept short, this review takes fifteen to thirty minutes and prevents the slow drift that ends accounts. Feed its findings into the monthly review.

Frequently asked questions

What should a weekly review focus on?

On process and aggregate risk rather than on the week's profit. Look at total R, how consistently you followed your rules, the heat and correlation you are carrying forward, and whether costs are eroding your edge. A profitable week built on broken rules is a warning sign, and a disciplined losing week can be perfectly acceptable.

How is a weekly review different from a post-trade review?

The post-trade review debriefs a single closed trade, while the weekly review aggregates the whole week to spot patterns and drift that no single trade reveals. Rising size, creeping correlation or a habit of widening stops show up across a week, not in one trade. The two work together: clean per-trade logs make the weekly view meaningful.

How long should a weekly review take?

Typically fifteen to thirty minutes if your trade journal is up to date. The aim is a routine short enough to do every week without fail, since consistency matters more than depth. If it stretches to an hour and gets skipped, trim it back to the few checks that most affect your survival.

What weekly signs suggest I should reduce size?

Rising per-trade risk, a run of rule-breaks, mounting drawdown near a preset limit, or feeling emotionally frayed and reactive. Any of these is a reason to trade smaller until discipline and clarity return. Cutting size during a rough patch is a survival tool, not an admission of failure; it keeps a bad week from becoming a fatal month.

Why check correlation weekly if each trade was sized correctly?

Because trades sized correctly in isolation can still combine into one large, concentrated bet when they move together. Several long-delta index positions or a cluster of bank stocks share one underlying driver, so a single adverse move hits them all. The weekly view is where this pooled risk becomes visible before it is tested.

Does a losing week mean my strategy is broken?

Not necessarily. Losing weeks are a normal part of any strategy with real variance, and reading too much into one week leads to over-tinkering. Judge the strategy over a larger sample in the monthly and longer reviews, and use the weekly check mainly to confirm you followed your process, not to re-engineer the system.

Last reviewed 12 July 2026. Educational content only — not investment advice.