How to develop own trade journal?

What is the benefit of recording all your trades in your journal?

• To help figure out the repetitive mistakes which you take unknowingly during your trades.
• To further develop you execution skill by re-analysis
• To increase you conviction would you trade the same pattern again.
• To see your strengths and weakness during the trade.

How to start a trading journal?

• You can start very general like putting the Buy & sell points, what setup, and reason for buying & selling.
• You may then start including charts with you analysis in it.
• You may as well add how did you behave during your trade.
• You may include your emotions too.
• You may also include a corrected execution would you trade it again.
• most importantly, be honest to criticize yourself.

What is the right way of doing it?

• There’s no right way in doing it or any standard format in making a journal but it’s important that you have to be able to recognize the following:
  • What are the causes of the mistake
  • How you could be able to make it better
• You have to try to eliminate the mistakes you commit in your trades and apply it with your next ones.

When I didn’t knew my trading profile and what niche I would fit in trading, it’s quite hard to figure out what I will write or put in my journal I just started anyway. Along the way, slowly, my trade journal also developed as I was gaining knowledge, skill and experience. I’ve seen some traders use notebooks and other’s save chart images including their comments/analysis. The only important thing when you are just starting yet is to begin something. I had to revised my journal many times and I’m pretty sure that I will still be revising them would I discover new stuff.

(screen capture of my old shelf)

Still my old analysis and studies are kept in one place. Without these I would have not developed my own journal. When I was able to figure my trading profile and style, it seemed that everything got simpler in terms of documenting my trades. The appearance of my charts evolved too. I knew what I was looking for as well as how I should be correcting it.

One of the greatest thing I did in my trading career was when I started making journal of my trades. I was able to understand and assess my trading performance as well as my execution. Figuring out what went wrong and how I could be able to fix it was the key benefit of having a trade journal.

Good luck mate!