So far, my survey generated a response rate of about 3.5%. A common average response rate is 10-15%. I like condensed information. In the case of charts and notes, I like them to be in the same place. Is the low rate of response indicating that people don't care about the way we gain expertise and knowledge or they don't understand the importance of the way we gain expertise and knowledge. Gabe
OK, here's what I think. A trader's 'journal' should be an account by a trader of their trades, including the good and the bad trades, with charts if the charts help to illustrate what the trader was trying to achieve. Cumulative P&L (expressed as percentage or actual Pounds/Euros/USD) and observations of what works and what doesn't work may be extremely useful to other traders. A journal should also include descriptions of common errors made by the trader, such as entering or exiting a trade too early/late. I don't regard a list of posts suchs as 'long YM @ 16100' as constituting a trading 'journal', but that's just my opinion, maybe others think it does.
Normally I would not quote a whole post but yours is describing exactly my thoughts. Now if people agree that charts and notes are important in a trader's development, one would expect most of the journals to contain a high number of charts (with or notes) but that is not the case. Take for instance a popular thread here on ET. It has about 740 posts but less than 220 charts (some of them are repeats). That is less than 30% of posts have charts, or take the most popular thread ever in the journals section of ET with over 50,000 post. That journal has less than 3,000 charts. That is about 6% of the posts have charts. These ratios should not be surprising when you see that the number of posts in the Journals forum far out number the posts in the Psychology forum. http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showpost.php?p=3914400&postcount=60 It seems to me that humans are trying their best to do the opposite of what will get them where they want to get (at least in trading). As an aside, take Al Brooks' book Reading Price Charts Bar by Bar. There are 432 pages in the book and it contains 275 charts. That is over 60% of the pages contain charts. Go figure. Gabe