Before you place your first trade, you need a plan that tells you exactly when to enter, when to exit, and when to simply wait. At MMM, this comes down to three pillars — trend, levels, and strategy — worked out ahead of time. A trade built on this foundation is a decision. Without this groundwork, a trade is just a hunch wearing a decision’s cloth.
The Beginner’s Trap: Reacting Instead of Planning
At MMM, we have observed a pattern among beginners: they carry forward a habit from everyday life — taking decisions impulsively, reacting to situations as they come. In everyday life, this may not always cost you much. But in trading, it is a costly mistake. Beginners look at a chart, see a candle moving, and react to it instantly — no pause, no plan, no thinking. This “reactive trading” is exactly the gap MMM’s 3-pillar system was built to close, permanently.
TLS – Mithun’s 3-Pillar System: Trend, Levels, Strategy
The three pillars on which this system rests are Trend, Levels, and Strategy. Over the years, I built this simple scoring framework — where points are assigned to each of the three pillars, and a trade only qualifies once the combined score reaches 80 out of 100.
Think of it the way a cricket batsman reads an innings before playing a single shot.
Trend (40 points): Read the momentum first
Before a batsman plays a stroke, they read which way the game is moving — is their side building momentum, or is the bowling side on top? A trader must do the same with price. Is the market in an uptrend or a downtrend?
Trend carries the highest weight in the system — 40 points — because trading against the dominant momentum is like trying to hit a rising delivery against the swing. It can work occasionally, but it is not a repeatable method.
Levels (30 points): Know the boundary rope
Every batsman knows exactly where the boundary rope sits and how far a shot needs to travel to be worth playing. In trading, these are your levels — breakout points, reversal zones, support, and resistance. They tell you how far price can realistically run before it meets resistance or finds support.
If price is approaching a level that has held before, that adds 30 points to the score. Levels give you a target and a limit, the same way the boundary rope defines what “enough” looks like on a cricket field.
Strategy (30 points): Wait for the loose ball
A good batsman does not swing at every delivery — they wait for the loose ball, the one bowled slightly short or too full, before committing. In trading, this is your confirmation pattern: a pinbar, a fakey, or another price-action signal that confirms the trend and level are genuinely in play.
This pillar carries 30 points. Without it, you are swinging blind.
The 80-Point Rule
Trend (40) + Levels (30) + Strategy (30) add up to 100. A trade is only taken when the score touches 80 or higher — meaning at least two pillars are strongly confirmed and the third is not contradicting them.
This single rule is what separates a trading plan from a trading impulse. It does not promise a winning trade every time; markets never offer that guarantee. What it offers is consistency — the same three questions, asked in the same order, every single time before capital goes on the line.
Building Your Own Plan with MMM
A trading plan is not a document you write once and forget. It is a discipline you rehearse until it becomes instinct — much like a batsman who has faced enough deliveries to read a bowler without thinking. At Mithun’s Money Market, this 3-pillar framework forms the foundation of what we teach across our Kickstarter, Group Training, and Elite Mentorship programs in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. If you are about to place your first trade, start here: define your trend, mark your levels, wait for your strategy to confirm — and only then, take the shot.
FAQs
Yes, practicing the plan on a demo account first helps confirm the rules work before real capital is involved.
The core structure can apply to both, but levels and volatility differ, so the plan usually needs asset-specific adjustments.
Review it periodically as your experience grows, but avoid changing it after every loss, as that defeats its purpose.
Yes — a trading journal tracks how well you actually followed your plan, which is different from having the plan itself.
The core structure stays the same, but experienced traders often add finer filters as they gain more market experience.