Though this was last year, it was one of the better journals I have read here; not so much b/c of the results but it shows how a journal can be useful.http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=6140 For watching a successful index trader, check out the ET chat during the day. Nitro posts his index trades in real time and does well.
If your worried about flame wars or people calling you a liar... your journal will be short lived as so many others before you here at ET. If the purpose of your journal is to prove something...post your trades in realtime and then post an end of day journal to explain those trades. However, its worthless to post a journal to prove something if you don't explain your trades nor post them in realtime as so many others here at ET have discovered. If your posting a journal to gain insights, helpful tips or constructive critism of your trading methodology... explain your methodology completely in the beginning in your initial message post with lots of chart examples. Use something like TTrader MyCharts to upload all your chart examples and/or new journal charts because ET limits itself to ONE chart per message post... http://www.ttrader.com/mycharts/index.php You can also tell everybody where you post your trades in one of those many online free realtime chat rooms just in case someone wants to talk to you in realtime. Note: Most chat rooms are a distraction...find one that's small enough so that you'll be able to still see your post a few minutes later without having to scroll back through about +50 messages. (you can even save your .txt from many of those realtime chat rooms) If you don't need insights nor need to prove anything and just want a journal for private reasons...use something like a weblog or live journal... http://www.livejournal.com http://www.lights.com/weblogs/hosting.html Simply...the trick to a good journal is to know what your really trying to accomplish by it and then take the appropriate steps to accomplish that goal. Remember this...online journals are time consuming...requires a lot of patience...your ignore list will grow and may interfere with your trading if your the type that get stressed very easily. In other words...if your not already use to posting an online journal nor use to posting your trades in realtime... you could be creating more problems for yourself via starting a public journal for the first time at a place like EliteTrader.com Last of all...when you decide to end (close) your ET journal...post a message to explain such. Many don't and simply dissappear into the night. Makes me think about another journal someone posted a link to... Whatever happen to Huios? He shut down his journal after going real money trades and while knowing he had a discipline problem. NihabaAshi
Nihaba, thanks for the detailed reply. I have nothing to prove. Only reason I would consider a real-time journal would be to gain insights, helpful tips or constructive critism of my trading. Just don't know if I'll be able to post real-time since most my trades are scalps in the futures market. I could probably post real-time stock trades since I give more time to my stock trades. -FastTrader