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This interview features Tori Trades at the FX Summit, recorded on the Words of Rizdom podcast hosted on-site by the Chart Addicts team. Tori is an eight-year futures trader currently transitioning from intraday to swing trading, guided by mentorship from her uncle and a growing social presence that documents her process. The setting is energetic, the questions are practical, and Tori’s story matters because it shows a realistic path—discipline, mentorship, and mindset—behind the highlight reels.
In this piece, you’ll learn how Tori structures a swing-trading lifestyle with fewer screens and more intention: alert-driven entries at key levels (trendlines, support, resistance), rules for holding winners through the emotional whipsaw, and simple habits to avoid micromanaging trades. You’ll also get her beginner-friendly pillars—treat trading like a long craft, simulate early to build reps, and protect your psychology with ruthless self-awareness—plus candid notes on being a female trader in a male-dominated space, the role of mentorship, and why she chose futures.
Tori Trades Playbook & Strategy: How She Actually Trades
Market Framework & Instruments
Here’s the big-picture lens before any buttons get clicked. The goal is to keep your universe tight, your rules simple, and your execution repeatable so you’re never improvising in the heat of the moment.
- Trade a small futures basket (e.g., index future + 1–2 commodities) to stay dialed in.
- Primary timeframe: 4H for structure; 1H/15m for timing only.
- Use a naked chart: price, levels, and a single ATR(14) for sizing—no indicator stacks.
- Weekly focus: 1–3 A+ setups; pass on everything else.
Bias Building: From Narrative to Levels
You don’t need a PhD macro model—just a clear directional lean and the levels that matter. This turns random candles into a map.
- Form a simple directional bias each weekend: up, down, or neutral for each market.
- Mark HTF swing structure: prior week high/low, HTF S/R, and active trendlines.
- If bias = up: only plan longs at demand/HTF trendline; if down: only shorts at supply/HTF trendline.
- No trade if bias and location disagree (e.g., long bias at resistance).
The Core Setup: High-Timeframe Trendline Break & Retest
This is the bread-and-butter pattern: let the 4H define the story, then execute the first clean retest without chasing.
- Draw 4H trendlines with 3+ touches and clear swing pivots—no forcing angles.
- Valid signal = 4H close through the line + evident stop-run or imbalance into fresh space.
- Entry window = first retest of the broken line or the newly flipped S/R zone.
- Invalidate the idea if the price closes back through the line on 4H.
Entry Triggers: From Idea to Fill
Ideas don’t pay—fills do. Convert structure into precise triggers that remove hesitation.
- Use limit orders at the retest zone; no chasing green/red bars.
- Confirmation on execution timeframe (15m): rejection wick + lower high for shorts / higher low for longs.
- If the retest overshoots the zone by >0.5× ATR(14) on 15m, skip—structure likely compromised.
- One entry attempt per setup; if it tags stop, stand down until a new 4H signal forms.
Risk & Position Sizing
Sizing is mechanical, so psychology doesn’t blow you up. Let volatility define distance; let math define size.
- Risk a fixed % per trade (e.g., 0.5–1.0% account).
- Stop goes beyond the opposing side of the structure: opposite side of the 4H line or most recent swing.
- Compute size = (Account * Risk%) ÷ StopDistanceTicks.
- Reduce size by 25–50% if the retest is “late” (third touch or sloppy wick cluster).
Trade Management: Scaling & Moving to Breakeven
Good entries deserve professional babysitting—light touch, not micromanagement.
- Scale-in only at pre-planned add zones (e.g., second 15m HL/LH) and never exceed 1.5× initial risk.
- Move stop to breakeven after 1R is achieved and structure confirms (new HL/LH printed).
- No trail via moving averages—trail under/over 1H swing lows/highs only.
- If HTF (4H) prints a full counter-structure (LL after a long / HH after a short), exit remainder.
Holding Winners: Stretching the Move
The edge compounds when you hold the right trades. Use structure to stay in, not feelings.
- Partial take at 1.5R–2R; let the runner target the next HTF level or measured move (swing A-B = C-D).
- As long as 1H keeps making HLs (for longs) or LHs (for shorts), do nothing.
- Ignore the first adverse 15m candle after extension; react only to a 1H structure break.
- If price gaps through your next target on open, book and re-assess—don’t re-enter mid-air.
Weekly Routine: Prep, Execute, Review
Routines make results boring—in the best way. This is the cadence that keeps you consistent.
- Sunday: mark HTF levels, trendlines, and pick A-setups; write a one-line bias per market.
- Daily pre-US session: refresh zones, set alerts at retest prices, and pre-load orders (inactive).
- Post-close: screenshot outcomes, log emotions/actions, tag each trade A/B/C quality.
Journal Metrics That Actually Improve P&L
Data beats vibes. Track what moves the needle and drop the rest.
- Win rate by setup (trendline break-retest only) and by location (into HTF level vs. mid-range).
- R multiple per trade and per week; aim for weekly expectancy > +0.5R with ≤ 3 trades.
- Average hold time on winners vs. losers; seek a widening gap (winners held longer).
- Rule breaks per week (entries chased, stops moved): must trend toward zero.
Psychological Guardrails
You can’t scale skill without guardrails. These rules prevent one bad day from erasing a good month.
- Max 2 trades/day, max 1 loss in a row on the same instrument.
- After any >1R loss, hard stop for the day; review before next session.
- If you miss the A-setup, you’re done for that market that day—no revenge entries.
- “Green day rule”: stop trading after banking ≥2R; protect state and clarity.
Playbook Checklist (Pre-Trade)
A final quick-scan so you don’t justify a C-trade as an A-trade five seconds before fill.
- Bias aligns with level (longs at demand/trendline support; shorts at supply/trendline resistance).
- 4H line broken and closed; clean space to next HTF level.
- Retest zone defined; limit order planned; stop location objective.
- Risk %, size, targets, and add rules written on chart notes.
Playbook Checklist (Post-Trade)
Close the loop fast while the memory is fresh—this is where iteration happens.
- Tag: A/B/C quality, reason for entry, reason for exit (rule-based or emotional).
- Note: Did you move to BE at 1R? Did you respect the 1H structure trail?
- Improvement cue: one sentence—what would make this same setup cleaner next time?
- Archive screenshot in a folder named by setup + R multiple for quick pattern recall.
Size Risk First: Let Volatility Dictate Position, Not Your Ego
Tori (known as “Tori Trades”) starts every idea by sizing it, not by predicting it. She makes the ATR do the talking: wider volatility means smaller size; quieter volatility allows a touch more exposure. This keeps each trade’s pain tolerable and the account’s risk uniform, no matter how spicy the market gets. The key move is converting distance-to-invalidations into dollars at risk before even thinking about entries.
Tori builds positions with a fixed risk percent and flexes contracts up or down so the stop aligns with real structure, not arbitrary numbers. If ATR expands mid-week, she cuts size on new trades automatically to keep R constant. When volatility compresses, she doesn’t “celebrate” with oversized bets—she maintains discipline so one outlier move can’t nuke the month. In short, Tori lets volatility set the bet, and her execution simply follows the math.
Diversify by Underlying, Strategy, and Duration to Smooth Equity Curves
Tori Trades (Tori) doesn’t chase “the one” setup—she spreads risk across different underlyings, playbooks, and holding periods so no single market mood can wreck her week. Indices, metals, or energies can each have a small, pre-set risk slice, while the tactics vary—trend-follow on clean 4H structure, breakout continuation after a retest, and a small mean-reversion sleeve when ranges dominate. By mixing time horizons—swing core with occasional tactical intraday adds—she reduces the chance that all trades respond the same way to a single news shock.
Tori caps correlation before it bites: never more than one highly correlated index position at full size, and a hard ceiling on aggregate sector exposure. Each sleeve has its own drawdown stop; if the mean-reversion bucket hits its weekly limit, she continues trading trend-follow and breakout, not shutting everything down. She staggers entries in time—no “all at once” fills—so she can read structure and add only if the thesis strengthens. The result is a steadier equity line built from many small, independent edges rather than one loud opinion.
Trade Mechanics Over Predictions: Rules Beat Opinions Every Single Day
Tori Trades (Tori) treats the edge as a factory, not a forecast. She sets a directional bias, but the actual go/no-go comes from mechanical triggers at predefined levels. If the trigger doesn’t print, she doesn’t “feel it” into existence. Her language is operational—checklists, alerts, and orders—not prophetic.
Mechanically, Tori pre-loads OCO orders with stop and target, so emotion can’t rewrite the plan. She won’t widen a stop; she’ll re-enter only if a fresh, rule-based setup appears. At +1R, she often shift-locks to breakeven and then trails behind 1H swing structure, not candles that “look scary.” Every trade gets graded on rule compliance, because Tori believes the win isn’t the P&L—it’s proving the process works the same way tomorrow.
Favor Defined Risk When Uncertain; Reserve Undefined Risk for A-Setups
When conditions get murky, Tori Trades (Tori) defaults to defined risk, so the downside is capped and the decision is clean. She’ll structure the trade so max loss is known in advance and sized to her R, then let the market prove it. If the read tightens and clarity improves, she’ll consider scaling only inside the original plan—never converting a questionable environment into a big, open-ended bet. Uncertainty is a position too, and for Tori, it means smaller, tighter, and quicker to scratch.
Undefined risk is a privilege reserved for A-setups where location, structure, and momentum all align. Tori demands confluence: 4H break-and-retest with clear space, supportive 1H flow, and a well-defined invalidation anchored in market structure. Only then does she allow wider, trailing stops that can breathe—but even there, total account heat is controlled and pre-committed. The line is simple: if she’s guessing, it’s defined; if she’s stacked, it can be undefined—still disciplined, never reckless.
Process Discipline: Preplan Entries, Automate Exits, Review Metrics Weekly
Tori Trades (Tori) treats preparation as the trade before the trade: she scripts entries at specific levels, sizes each position by risk, and writes the invalidation in plain language on the chart. Her platform is set with OCO orders, so the target and stop are live the moment she’s filled—no “I’ll manage it manually” impulses. Alerts fire at approach, not after a breakout, which keeps her from chasing and preserves R multiples.
Each wee,k Tori runs a quick metrics audit: win rate by setup, average R, and time-in-trade for winners versus losers. If a setup’s expectancy slips below her threshold, it’s paused until the data recovers—no sacred cows. She grades every execution for rule adherence, not outcome, and tags emotional lapses to spot patterns. By front-loading decisions and automating exits, Tori keeps discretion where it belongs—in the plan—and lets the market do the rest.
Tori Trades’ core message is beautifully unglamorous: this isn’t a get-rich-quick game, it’s a craft. She builds a swing-friendly routine around life rather than screens—no session worship, just alerts at pre-marked trendlines and support/resistance so she shows up when price actually matters. That reduces emotional fatigue and the urge to micromanage; if a position whips around for days, she protects her mindset by stepping back instead of clicking around. The method is simple on purpose: structure on higher timeframes, mechanical triggers, and volatility-aware sizing so each trade risks the same dollar R even when markets get loud.
Her path also underlines practice and psychology. Tori front-loaded reps with a long stretch of simulation to normalize wins and losses before scaling up, then carried those habits into live trading with preplanned orders and written invalidations. When she feels “off”—winner or loser—she cuts herself off, reviews, and returns with a clearer head. And she encourages traders, especially women entering a male-dominated space, to document the journey, keep showing up, and tune out the noise. The net takeaway: simplify the chart, automate the decisions you can, respect volatility, and guard your state—because edge compounds only when discipline survives the week.
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