Do to poor performance, I am out for a while... A shame, because I should be making a killing! Anyway, I use this time to go over my trades and formulate what the f went wrong, adjust my plan if necessary. I thought a thread about journals, trade logs, trade plans, reviews (and so on) would be helpful to others. So let's post our ideas on how we learn from past trades! *Here's a google doc, that acts as a platform for most of my dealings... This tab is my account value and open positions (not including day trades). *Here's the watchlist (again, not for day trades) I save my watchlists by month and review them for trends / accuracy of my observations... *I print a couple of these for day trades... *Closed day trades. Entering updates my risk mgmt / position sizing... *Day's end I enter trades into an access database query (arranged for cut and paste from my broker). Here are the fields / data stored: *I can export a form of the db into PDFs for review. I also add charts in the form (they are stored in the db). Things I need to improve on: *I think the journal (and form especially) might be too expansive and redundant for day trades... Maybe that's why I suck at day trading. *The "Method" isn't uniform enough, I'm thinking of making a key ([Strategy] 1, 2, 3), that way it will be queryable. *Still trying to come up with a non-subjective grade format or formula. Thought about Elder's % of channel captured, but didn't really like it. Also, I desperately need to write a Trade Plan and Review template: *I was thinking of combining them: Plan - Review (of how well plan was executed and how well it performed). *Plot graphs have been very helpful to me to isolate great and disastrous trades and trends. *Performance measures: equity curve, R, accuracy, Net $, Commissions... Anyone have an examples or advice of Trade Plans / Performance Reviews? Do you not use records -why? Have you found them critical -why? How do you all do it and why? Any advice for other traders? -Good trading, best of luck to all.
Man those are tight stops! How do you set your stops? The market is volatile now you might want to adjust them.