2 September 2026 · Malee Somsak
Write the invalidation line before the entry
The studio asks for the sentence “this idea is wrong if” before any entry price. Students who reverse that order rarely follow the page.
When a plan arrives for annotation, the first thing I look for is not the target. I look for a sentence that would make the idea wrong. If that sentence is missing, the rest of the page is a wish with numbers on it.
The order we teach is deliberate. Write “this idea is wrong if” and finish the sentence with something you can see on the chart you named. A close back through a level. A swing that breaks the structure you used. A week in which the setup never prints and the idea simply expires. Then, and only then, write where an entry would be considered.
People resist this because the entry is the exciting line. It is also the line that gets edited in the heat of a session if nothing is holding it. An invalidation written first is dull and hard to negotiate with. That is why it belongs first.
A usable sentence is specific to the timeframe in the plan. “Wrong if it looks weak” is not a sentence you can obey at 20:10. “Wrong if the daily closes back under the reclaimed level” can be obeyed, because the daily either closed there or it did not. You may still dislike the outcome. You will not be able to pretend the page was unclear.
Targets can stay short. Many of the plans I return have a full paragraph on reward and half a line on failure. I ask for the opposite ratio. One line for the hoped-for area is enough if the failure line is clear. The weekly loss limit, written in baht or in R, does more work than a distant target copied from someone else’s chart.
There is a second kind of invalidation that students forget: time. A setup that must print during a session you cannot watch is already invalid for you, even if the picture is beautiful. Put that in the sentence. “Wrong if it has not printed before the Bangkok close I actually see.” Plans that include the life around the chart get followed. Plans that assume an empty calendar do not.
On the last studio evening the author reads the failure sentences aloud without reading the entries. If the room cannot tell what would cancel the idea, the entry lines wait. We have never lost a useful plan by making it wait. We have lost many to a first line that was only a price.