Hi everyone What do you think on keeping a trading diary? Please share your views. For me, I think that it'll also be an invaluable tool in helping you avoid making mistakes more than once and help to notice these patterns It also allow you to focus on the things that actually work.
Finest book you will ever read... âThose who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.â Sir Winston Churchill
A journal is good but nothing beats hard data. Use the journal to steer you toward what hard data to collect and focus on.
When I first heard of the concept of a trading journal, I thought it was stupid. After about a year though I came around and now keep a journal faithfully. I highly recommend it. For me the main benefit has been to keep me focused on my trading plan. I review all of my trades and do a post trade analysis. This does not have to be a dissertation. It can be as simple or detailed as you wish to make it. The key is to make it work for you. After a while, patterns began to emerge in my trading mistakes and with some discipline I began to eliminate more of these low probability setups. Good luck, I suggest you give it a try.
yes. I started off writing a weekly update in the TA forum, then switched to writing daily calls in a journal in the Journal forum during the time I was posting daily calls in the journal, my then trading method began to self destruct, and in part while making new discoveries, this caused me to begin developing a new trading method my new journal is in part making calls, but it's also a record of testing my method with real money, and I favor writing a public journal because otherwise I wouldn't keep one and, writing things down, provided one re-reads them forces action/change to be made to one's system, method, trading, self etc imo, a daily trading journal is The, number 1 tool in anyone's trading system/method
right brain, left brain, there's no accounting for it, the two will never understand each other and in extreme cases become lifelong enemies. If you like taking notes at lectures, then by all means, keep a journal. Not for me, no way. That's not how I process information. But if you're another one of those dumbshits that takes notes, I can only wait for you to put your book together and tell me how I am doing everything wrong. Sorry, I'm a little giddy because I just hit a new high this morning. Talk to me again when I am in the depths of drawdown and maybe I will listen and even believe. I keep waiting for the man that has kept notes and writes the book, "The Proper Way to Make Love to a Woman."
Yes I accept with you. Nothing can beats hard data. But a trade journal has some important aspects like to keep the following information on: What Currency Pair I Traded Date & Time of Trade Stop Loss Level Take Profit Level Target Reason for Taking the Trade Strength of Conviction About the Trade (out of 10) Length of Time You Were in The Trade Profit or Loss of Trade Did You Stick to Your System / Initial Analysis (Yes or No)
Below is a list to have a better idea of what to include in your own plan, but you don't necessarily have to follow it exactly. What Currency Pair I Traded Date & Time of Trade Stop Loss Level Take Profit Level Target Reason for Taking the Trade Strength of Conviction About the Trade (out of 10) Length of Time You Were in The Trade Profit or Loss of Trade Did You Stick to Your System / Initial Analysis (Yes or No). Remember, you are the one who's going to benefit from writing a trading journal. So write down what you think you would benefit the most from!