Well it completely depends upon how you are trading. We use a database where each trade is entered with the entry, exit and cost paramters, as well as the justification for the entry and the exit. In this way each trade for each trader can be audited in a meaningful way that allows quality improvement. You could put this together in Access which would be a better long term solution than Excel.
I use Excel for my trading journal. I use table : each trade one row. Each column has something important for me. I do swingtrades. My rows titles are: Year Month Date in ticker size Lo/Sh Entry price Exit price Date out commis net p/l trade type (symbol for my setup type) Why exitted P/L% +/- Note Mistake P/L points based on these I do analysis using special tables funtions in Excel.
I have a very basic understanding of access. I am ok with excel however. Could you (if you have time) elaborate a little on how to set up such a beast in access? Why is it better? Is it something a novice could put together?
Excel would work fine: For us everything in the company sits in a relational database. If you generate a lot of data, over time it is usually much better to have a relational stucture in place earlier rather than later: otherwise at some point you need to convert it from the nonrelational proprietary format of Excel - although you can link excel to an external database in order to process data but as the datasets get large and the processing nontrivial this will become too slow. You could start off with excel and just take a look at Access - if you already have it - as a prelude for the future. Use the built-in help and wizards as learning tools. If you are just starting out the limitations of the Excel format will not be a problem for quite a while.
I've done a lot of trade analysis in Excel. I especially like the auto-filter tool, particularly if you have more than one strategy and like to do comparisons. I'd go with richk's suggestions from earlier, but perhaps: 1) Go with your dates in mm/dd/yy format (in case you ever want to sort by another column and get back easily). 2) Enter your risk and your target (if applicable) to get a feel for your initial risk/reward ratio. You can compare this to your W/L ratio to see how your plan compares to actual. Good luck.