Linda Raschke: The Process Trader Who Never Enters Without a Plan

Linda Bradford Raschke has traded professionally for more than four decades, from the exchange floor to running her own fund, and she still posts her setups publicly today. Jack Schwager profiled her in The New Market Wizards alongside Druckenmiller and Lipschutz. What sets her apart in this series is not a famous trade or a headline return. It is the most boring and most transferable edge there is: process.

Key takeaways

• Raschke never enters a trade without a written game plan, which she treats as an anchor against emotional decisions.
• She predicts direction, not magnitude, sets no fixed targets, and exits on price action.
• She believes she could give away every setup and it would not matter, because most people cannot follow a system or control their emotions.
• Her process is routine and repeatable, which makes it a clean benchmark to measure your own behavior against.

Four decades of doing the work

Raschke started as a floor trader, learning to read markets in the most direct environment there is, then built LBR Group as a money manager and later ran her own commodity pool. Across that span her style stayed short-term: swing and day trades in futures, built on a library of well-defined technical setups. But ask her where the edge lives and she does not point to the setups. She points to preparation, routine, and the discipline to follow a plan when the screen is trying to talk you out of it.

“I never enter the market without a written game plan; it acts as an anchor that prevents emotional reactions during the heat of battle.”

Linda Bradford Raschke

The written game plan

This is the habit at the center of everything she does. Before the trade, the entry trigger, the stop, the exit logic, and the size are already decided, in writing. The plan is not there to predict the future. It is there to remove the in-the-moment decision making that emotion hijacks. When a position moves against you, that is precisely when judgment is worst and a pre-written plan is worth the most. Most traders improvise the exit while the money is moving, which is the single most expensive moment to be making fresh decisions.

The exit is where pros separate from amateurs

Raschke is emphatic that entries are the easy part. Anyone can get into a trade. The professional is defined by the exit, and her approach to it is revealing: she believes you can forecast direction but not magnitude, so she does not set price targets and instead lets the market’s own action tell her when to leave. That keeps her from the two classic exit errors at once, snatching a winner early because it hit an arbitrary number, and holding a loser because it has not hit her hoped-for target yet. The plan defines where she is wrong. Price action defines where she is done.

The secret is that there is no secret

The most freeing thing Raschke has said is that she could hand you all of her setups, step by step, and it would change almost nothing, because most people cannot control their emotions or follow a system, and many would not even trust her method enough to run it. This is the same truth Richard Dennis found with the Turtles and that runs through every profile in this series. The information is not the edge. The execution is. Which means the work of getting better is not collecting more setups. It is closing the gap between your plan and your behavior.

Treat it like a craft, not a thrill

Underneath her method is a temperament worth copying. Raschke approaches trading like a disciplined professional showing up to do reps: a consistent daily routine, homework done the night before, markets prepared in advance, and emotion treated as something to manage rather than obey. The drama most traders bring to the screen is itself a leak. Her calm, repeatable process is the antidote, and it is available to anyone willing to be a little bored.

From belief to behavior: measuring it in your own data

Raschke’s process is a gift to a behavioral journal because every part of it is checkable. You can compare what your plan said to what you actually did, trade by trade.

This is the case for a behavioral journal over a plain log. A log records the trades. A behavioral read tells you where your execution drifts from your own plan, and what the drift costs. Gecko scores exactly these patterns from an uploaded statement, including after-loss tilt, hold-time discipline, and the ratio of your average win to your average loss, so Raschke’s process discipline becomes a number you can measure in yourself.

Resources: where to follow and what to read

• Follow Linda Raschke
• X (Twitter): @LindaRaschke, where she still posts technical setups and market notes. Beware of impostor accounts.
• Website: lindaraschke.net.
• Street Smarts with Larry Connors, the short-term trading classic, home of Turtle Soup, the Holy Grail, and other setups.
• The New Market Wizards by Jack Schwager, whose Raschke chapter is the best primer on her mindset.

Her own note worth keeping in mind: she has said traders do not need more setups, they need the tools to manage risk, state of mind, and uncertainty. That is the whole reason this series exists. See our Reminiscences breakdown for the foundation.

Do you actually follow your own plan?

Plan adherence, exit discipline, and emotional control are all measurable. Upload a broker statement and Gecko names where your execution drifts from your plan, in dollars, and scores it across twelve behavioral axes. No login or broker connection needed, and your first 100 trades are analyzed free.

Read your trades free →An educational tool, not financial advice.

Frequently asked questions

This article is part of Gecko’s trading psychology series. Biographical details and quotations are drawn from Linda Bradford Raschke’s public writing, interviews, and Jack Schwager’s The New Market Wizards, as of June 2026. Gecko is an educational and informational tool and is independent and not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Ms. Raschke. Nothing here is financial, investment, or trading advice. Trading carries substantial risk of loss.