Keeping a Trading Journal

What to record

• The mechanics: date, pair, direction, timeframe, entry, stop, target, size, exit, result in money and in multiples of risk.
• The setup: which rule of the strategy it was, with a chart screenshot at entry.
• The execution: did you follow the rules exactly? If not, what changed and why?
• The state: how you felt before and during, on a simple scale.
• The outcome review: what went right or wrong, one line.

Tools

A spreadsheet works. Dedicated journaling apps import trades from your platform and calculate statistics, and they are worth paying for once you have a few months of data. Whatever the tool, the screenshot and the honest note about execution are the parts that matter and the parts most often skipped.

Reviewing

Weekly: read every trade, mark rule breaks, note the pattern. Monthly: calculate win rate, average win and loss, expectancy and drawdown, by setup and by pair. Quarterly: decide what the data says about the strategy and the plan. The performance lessons later in this course define those figures.

Strategy versus execution

A losing month with every trade taken by the rules is information about the strategy. A losing month with half the trades off-plan is information about you, and the strategy is untested. The journal is the only way to tell the two apart, and the answer decides what to fix.

Key takeaways

• Record mechanics, setup, execution, state and a review line for every trade.
• Screenshots and honest execution notes are the valuable parts.
• Review weekly, monthly and quarterly.
• The journal separates strategy problems from discipline problems.