How do you organize your trading notes and material?

H

Howard

Hi all,

I'm continuously studying the markets and making notes and taking screenshots. If I backtest a particular pattern or behavior, I have one folder for that with screenshots and notes.

I do my best to organize this information logically in folders or separate documents according to fitting categories, but still, it gets messy and hard to review later on due to the sheer volume of it all.

Any advice on an approach or tool that could better help my organize my research/notes?

Thanks in advance.
 
Welcome to my world.

Use excel/handbook and make a table for each week containing rows and columns. Each row is for each screenshot/setup that you want to track. For each column, it will be trades that you execute. Whether your trade is executed at day or night sessions, along with trend or against the trend, how many ticks or points given before reversal and etc... Make sure you include these info. in your column.

After months and years of tracking, you will have an estimate on average how many ticks/points you get for that setup in a similar market condition. It's very important to do so or else, you will keep getting struggling over and over again for your whole life because you can't tell which setup you intend for scalping, day trading or a home run one. I wish someone told me this years ago so I could do it properly to begin with lol.

Doing so, you will find your 'aha moments' one day and you are all set to go. Most people spending years and couldn't even find one proper setup to make consistent money. You are lucky if you could find several.
 
Howard said:
Hi all,

I'm continuously studying the markets and making notes and taking screenshots. If I backtest a particular pattern or behavior, I have one folder for that with screenshots and notes.

I do my best to organize this information logically in folders or separate documents according to fitting categories, but still, it gets messy and hard to review later on due to the sheer volume of it all.

Any advice on an approach or tool that could better help my organize my research/notes?

Thanks in advance.
More...
I use Evernote (free version). Like the tagging that gets me all relevant screenshots with a click.
 
There are programs that you can input your trades/statements in. Those are pretty good.

I also have a tablet I use to write down notes on some trades
 
Thanks a lot, everyone. Evernote/Onenote seems to be commonly mentioned.

Is there a learning curve using those or is it fairly straight out of the box to use?

The prior/current format would simply be an Excel file with 2 sheets per day. One with an annotated chart and comments. One with my trade performance (pasted from Ninja). And a separate P&L Excel file. It's not that bad.

In addition, I have a huge amount of material on statistical signals/notes, charting signals, etc. For my charting signals, I actually wrote a book in Word and used hyperlinks.

It's not half bad.

But still, I have a LOT of stuff and my library is ever growing - so I think I can find ways to improve.

Regards.
 
Howard said:
Thanks a lot, everyone. Evernote/Onenote seems to be commonly mentioned.

Is there a learning curve using those or is it fairly straight out of the box to use?

The prior/current format would simply be an Excel file with 2 sheets per day. One with an annotated chart and comments. One with my trade performance (pasted from Ninja). And a separate P&L Excel file. It's not that bad.

In addition, I have a huge amount of material on statistical signals/notes, charting signals, etc. For my charting signals, I actually wrote a book in Word and used hyperlinks.

It's not half bad.

But still, I have a LOT of stuff and my library is ever growing - so I think I can find ways to improve.

Regards.
More...
I found Evernote pretty straightforward. Only thing I put effort into is keeping tags logical and streamlined so that it's easy to call up every instance of anything I'm looking for.
 
Hi Howard,

I really like OneNote (comes with MS Office).
It's got dedicated apps or a web version and you can make notebooks public (editable or read only).

I just created a view only sample so you can check it out:
https://1drv.ms/o/s!AoRCjOhApUjClVnx4vI68ADZrCSk


Uagcv2j.png


Good luck!

Alex
 
mercurial said:
Hi Howard,

I really like OneNote (comes with MS Office).
It's got dedicated apps or a web version and you can make notebooks public (editable or read only).

I just created a view only sample so you can check it out:
https://1drv.ms/o/s!AoRCjOhApUjClVnx4vI68ADZrCSk

Good luck!

Alex
More...

That's very generous of you, Alex! Thanks a lot!

It does indeed look neat.

I'm sure this must be the way to go.

PS: Nice research. I look into similar stuff myself.

Best regards.
 
MarkBrown said:
i use Irfanview to scroll with my mouse wheel back thru all the screenshots very fast and easy.

to take the screen shots and organize them (any way you wish) automatically by date i use ScreenshotCaptor
More...

I'm testing out Tradervue. Not bad though it doesn't do everything I want. But still useful.

It's interesting to study my stats. I have 70% winning percentage which doesn't mean shit because I still didn't make that much. The main reason is the BIG countertrend losses of the past!

On my winning days(70% of the time), my profit factor was 16.93, On my losing days, my profit factor was 0.19. That's amazing stats! But I still ended up shitty is because I let the occasional losses get big. No more! That's what's killing me.

I have some outsized winners and outsized losers. If I eliminated(cut losses faster or don't enter in bad trades to start with), then my P&L stats will go way better!

That's this year's goal.
 
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