how much time should be spent on journaling?

It should be brief. Otherwise, it will make review of the journal more difficult. The main focus are the "what" and "why". E.g. scanning strategy comes up with these and why decide on this and not that...

 

Hello tomas262,

I agree. We do not do nothing wrong as manual traders, take our best educated and experienced guess.

 

67.2 aeons

 

You Will Remember Information Longer if you Hand Write Notes

 

Less than 5 minutes per day maybe. Just recording setup type, entry, exit, lot size, special remark. Not sure what do you mean by journaling other than that.

 

often the act of writing the journal is enough to compile your thoughts with no need to review it.

 

I spend 1 hour a day on journaling and bookkeeping my trades. 1/2 in the morning to make my plan and 1/2 hour throughout the day to review book performance.

This saves me about 3 hours a day because I don’t stare at the screen looking at the same position all day just watching the last tick.

It also allows me to get perspective on what’s important - driving factor for my risk.

I journal other aspects of my life:
My business
My health (diet/exercise)
My emotional well being

 

i have an excel spreadsheet as my trading journal which consist of the following: ticker symbol, buy date/time, buy price, buy total price, sold date/time, sold price, sold total, p/l, p/l%, note. i do my journaling in real time during the day when i have down time and waiting for my setup.

 

And how will you know, if after X-XX months it turns out you didn't make any money, where it all went wrong and what went right?

It's also funny you say nothing needs improvement, but at the same time you do not know if you will be making any money yet?

How can you know nothing needs improvement if you don't even know if what you are doing works or not?

 

Good Morning FTDK,

Once I click buy or sell button, the trade either wins or loses. At the end of the year or month, I will either make a lot of money or not.

If I do not make money, I try something else. If I make money, I keep going until rich.

Trying to improve in manually trading I've learned in trading is a waste of time. We are adults, and we need to be mature about what is instantly working and what's not going to work. There is no need to make life complicated journaling 100 things.

Just trade from the chart, do what you feel and do it alot.

Don't change nothing until after 1000 trades. Then you know what work.

You can't improve forever. Improving in trading is marketing. Just keeping on clicking.