Trading journal format

K

Kevmeister

Hello Traders,

Since creating a journal is probably one of the most important tasks a trader can do, I was wondering if anybody would share how they've set up their's up. There are several questions I would like addressed:

1. Exactly what columns do you find most important (necessary) for a good trading journal?
2. Do you put all trades in your journal or just the losing trades?
3. Do you prefer to free-form everything or have a line of evenly spread columns?
4. Are their any software trading journal programs?

I've traded successfully for the last 18 months and have had a difficult time sticking with my trading journal. I do anywhere from 10 - 30 trades a day and found it very time consuming to enter all trades.

Also, Exactly what data do you find necessary to track and why?

Forgive me if i'm dense but why do you want to track your % wins and losses, number of shares traded and any other data that you find useful?

It would really be helpful if you would all share your trading journal basics and what data you use and why you use it.

Thanks,

Kevin
 
I don't really keep a trading journal, but I do track my performance. I use MB Trading or whatever their name is now :) and I download all the trading records from their website and import them into Excel. I then simply look at profit and loss and stuff like that. Although my teachers tell me to keep a journal and records etc., I have always neglected it. I just don't want to over analyze things. How is that for a retired private investigator? I could be rebeling.

Bill
 
Originally posted by Kevmeister

4. Are their any software trading journal programs?
More...

There is a site that will launch soon. I believe they will have a trading journal. I'll post here when they open because it sounds like it will be a cool site.
 
A trading journal is incredibly usefull if it is approached properly. If you are doing a lot of trades a day (20+) then you may not want to enter really detailed info on each as it would be too cumbersome.

I keep track of my %win/loss as well as R (number of times profit/loss my initial risk) I pay close attention to losses. I want to analyse why I lost. For example, was it something out of my game plan, was it a distraction, a human error, etc.

I also keep track of the time of day for trades and see if that correlates to wins/losses.

To answer your question, the reason you want to keep track of your trades is to come up with your expectancy (a concept that is discussed by Tharp in his books).

I recently started separating my stats for long/shorts to see if there is a difference in how I treat each side of the trade. Its very interesting to say the least!

I do a monthly review also to pay close attention ot mistakes, errors, etc. and then think of ways to solve problems and prevent others.

hope that helped a little to answer your question

 
The site I referred to above just opened for business. They have "Trade Diary" that seems to automatically analyze the trade data after input. I haven't tried it so I can't speak for it's usefulness. The theme of the site is to become a better "Investor" but the site is all about trading.

You have to register but it's free.
http://www.innerworth.com
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top