Not really sure if that can be done. Spreadsheets do get large and I print out the last 3 pages usually as the past pages have the closed trades. Those last 3 pages I have updated the latest trades and enables me to focus on them. I have added at the bottom, some useful formulas to figure out the win/loss percentages, total gains and losses, average gain vs average loss, average gain/average loss ratio. That enables me to figure out how I am doing performance wise. Simple is better and I do not wish to complicate it further.
Are you using just one sheet for the diary, if so, how many pages does that go on for? It would become a very long diary on one sheet, yes, no?
I used to keep track of everything in an excel spreadsheet. Now all I do is take a screen shot of the chart with a few notes. Nice and simple.
Grantx, you have been a way long time, missed you, welcome back, nice to see you contributing again, hope you have been keeping well Do you just compile your screen shots and notes on MS Word? I have notes all over the place, Excel, Word, some on note paper, some in emails... Often when out having a coffee or sometimes in bed at night I want to make some notes, everything at the moment for me is disjointed re note taking of trading ideas. I was wondering if google supplied a diary, they promote google calendar which can be used as a diary, but I found this.... https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/my-diary/igfnkanfehhehlajnhpajibfcfgkaikl
I don't write notes on each trade until, I close it. Then, I will know what I did right or wrong and note it in the spreadsheet. So far in 2018, I have 18 pages. Not bad really because it is a wealth of information for me in terms of feedback on what I need to improve on and what I need to keep doing! My notes are shorter like one or two sentences below the trade itself.
I dont keep any notes once a trade has completed. There is absolutely no value in what I think about any particular trade with the benefit on hindsight. I am more interested in what I was thinking at the time when I was making a decision on incomplete data. I always look forward with scenarios and that is what gets recorded. See image at the bottom. I have plenty of examples like this. I never have to worry about whether I am following my plan or not because I trade off levels with limit orders. I dont see the point of going to all the effort of identifying levels and then ‘waiting to see what happens’ when price gets there?!? Id say 95% of my time is spent scenario planning so when I put my limit orders in I am 100% committed. There is no more point analysing after that fact because either I was run over or it worked...onto the next trade. I dont get too involved in post trade statistical analysis either. I'm making money or not. I dont think many would agree with this kind of approach but thats how I roll.
Had my thinking cap on yesterday, I'm going to further take advantage of how I currently use the cloud, will probably design a diary with a cloud folder, that way it is accessible everywhere I go. Probably wont use any Diary Apps as they seem to want to charge a monthly or annual fee. There is always a danger of an App no longer becoming available, eg they run it down until it becomes unreliable and buggy, so will prolly use Word/Excel type software. The cloud charges seem far more reasonable than diary App charges and cloud is more versatile with what can be achieved.
100% agree with you. I subscribed to tradervue for a month but found that excel could achieve exactly the same thing. Now I use Dropbox for images and Google docs. Even my trading is all in the cloud. No more reliance on a single computer.
I am currently checking out TradeBench -- which is free. Pros: (1) FREE; (2) track multiple brokerage accounts; (3) allows you to set up strategies and checklists; (4) web-based; (5) fairly flexible -- you can be more or less detailed. Only major con for me is lack of forex support (but you can still enter forex trades -- it's just entirely manual -- you just won't get current values on open positions, etc.). Initially, I didn't think TradeBench would suit my needs but as I played around with it and only used the features that mattered to me, I now feel it may work well with how I approach the markets. I plan to use it through the end of the year and see how it works out. I also have Edgewonk which I have used periodically. It has some good features, but now having tried TradeBench I think that will work better for me on a regular basis. Edgewonk is a stand-alone solution, although you can load it on DropBox to make it cloud-based but you still have to manage it in your DropBox account versus the entirely web-based TradeBench.