Process vs Outcome Thinking

Process versus outcome thinking is the distinction between judging a trade by how the decision was made and judging it by whether it made money. Over a single trade the outcome says almost nothing: markets are probabilistic, so a well-reasoned, correctly sized trade can lose and a reckless one can win. Rewarding yourself for the second teaches the wrong lesson, and punishing the first can dismantle a workable plan. Process thinking asks different questions — was the setup valid, was risk sized by rule, was the exit honoured — and leaves profit and loss to be read across many trades, where it carries more information. It does not make any process profitable; it only makes results interpretable.