How do you keep log/journal of your trades?

Martinsos

Martinsos

What do you guys think about logging your trades, and how do you do it? I still have a lot to learn about options so I would like to also learn from my previous trades, and I would love to hear how are more experienced traders doing that.
Which tool do you use to track your trades? What do you do with them, which metrics do you observe?
 
For accounts that use Apex Clearing as their broker through us, you can go back up to 2 years and export all your trades. Also, we use a report platform from Nirvana Solutions that can also produce reports. This way you don't have to do anything on a daily basis.

If you are trading for yourself, I'm not sure what value this has except at tax time. If you are looking to start a hedge fund or run SMA, daily P/L is a more common request to view risk. So if that is your goal, I would keep track of daily Net Liquidating Equity and cash adjustments so you can have a running P/L, which is hard to produce in the future.
 
Martinsos said:
What do you guys think about logging your trades, and how do you do it? I still have a lot to learn about options so I would like to also learn from my previous trades, and I would love to hear how are more experienced traders doing that.
Which tool do you use to track your trades? What do you do with them, which metrics do you observe?
More...


I manually input all my trades into an Excel spreadsheet. Been doing that for years.

If you don't have a record, how can you perform analysis?

Have a look at the book Trading Risk By Ken Grant to see what analysis you need to do.
 
It's good to have a journal record of some kind, either a formal or informal one -- but don't put too much emphasis on it :banghead:
...no matter how much you analyze or stare at it...each day and scenario is completely different. o_O:cool:

You will be right and wrong, or somewhere in between...you can even still be wrong, but right.
Trading kind of involves quickly thinking on your feet -- and not looking back or dwelling.
trading.jpg
 
Absolutely must have a one to few journals all giving you different insights of where you are in your experience. I have onboard voice recorder as I talk to myself while trading of what I am taking signals, what I am seeing, how am feeling about the trade(that part I have found is seldom right which I use to my advantage), then I have someone else take info and document it and also put into spreadsheet, have few dozen different entries about the entry, during trade and whys of exit. It truly only way to get better to me.
 
I used to keep an excel log of everything, but filling it in, means I miss the next trade or 2, although I post most trades in my journal, I prefer to just dump the statement into excel and chart my performance over all.

If my account is going up, then I'm happy, if it's not I have an issue.
 
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