What are the key elements to include in a trading journal, and based on your personal experience, how has maintaining a trading journal helped improve your trading performance?
The most important for me with my trading journal is notes I put under the trade records. I use excel to keep a record of my trades. Trading strategy you used in getting into a trade. You should review it periodically, to make sure that you are not overlooking important information from it like mistakes you are making. Let me give one example. Taking profits too soon. Say, you place a trade and 3 days later just sell it because you want to book your profits. There may be no good reason to take profits prematurely. If you are making those mistakes, over and over, you are missing a good chunk of profits that you left on the table. If you know your mistakes, you can minimize them if not, avoid them and improve as a trader almost, immediately.
Trading journal is my foundation for performance metrics, and a systematic record of recording market conditions so I know when to trade or when to stay on the sidelines. Taking notes also keeps the voices in my head contained.
Can you expand on that with an example? Do you use a spreadsheet to track performance metrics? Which metrics do you track? What kind of market conditions? How do you quantify them?
I like to tag and categorize day/price behavior and trades taken in Logseq for review. Every so often I'll export the tags for analysis in excel. During the trading day I'll use the database as a reference for possible scenarios.
May I ask what details do you jot down? How often do you check that? I mean what factors do you care while checking?
You know in all honesty, I sometimes record the details of my trades. I occasionally keep track of my trades. I had no idea how crucial they may be to trading strategy. I make the decision to ask questions about what you guys record and how you evaluate them. I forget to apply them then.
How your trading notebook records market conditions and becomes the basis for performance measures interests me.How do your notes help you stay focused and manage those internal voices?
Impressive, is a smart way to maintain a comprehensive trading journal.Have you noticed any valuable insights or patterns from your Excel analysis?