Trading Journals

FWIW, I've found Alex Elder's "Trader's Organizer" to be a comprehensive, fairly painless way to keep track of things. It's Excel-based and you can find it at:

http://www.elder.com

Uni (no, I don't have any kind of business relationship with his company, I just like this product)
 
Quote from Uni:

FWIW, I've found Alex Elder's "Trader's Organizer" to be a comprehensive, fairly painless way to keep track of things. It's Excel-based and you can find it at:

http://www.elder.com

Uni (no, I don't have any kind of business relationship with his company, I just like this product)
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Took a look at it....pretty nice....but what we are planning is way ahead of this...but like i will always say...use what you are use to and happy with
Good Trading..
 
Quote from jpomerenke:



Took a look at it....pretty nice....but what we are planning is way ahead of this...but like i will always say...use what you are use to and happy with
Good Trading..
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Joey, I just took a look at your work-in-progress and I'm impressed. I especially like the screenshot option. Keep us posted as to when a beta will be available.

Uni
 
If anyone is trying to send us a email through the site, we had some troubles setting up the email client. It should be up very soon. So just send us a request later if you recieve the email back.
Thanks
 
Quote from jpomerenke:

If anyone is trying to send us a email through the site, we had some troubles setting up the email client. It should be up very soon. So just send us a request later if you recieve the email back.
Thanks
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Ok feedback email working..sorry to anyone that had troubles emailing us.
 
Joey, this journal idea of yours is excellent. As for myself, last year alone I wrote over 150 single spaced typed pages in my trading journal. It covered everything from my lessons of the day to how I felt entering and exiting positions. It also included charts for reference. Even non-trading related stuff going on in my life was included. Nowadays, I still keep a daily journal but it is not nearly as detailed. Just enter each trade...time, average entry price, average exit price, number of contracts, symbol, reason for entry, reason for exit, duration of trade, and general notes on the trade. I suspect the average losing trader does not even have a clue as to why he's entering or exiting his trades...all based on hunches and emotions. A journal is a great way to go back and re-live your past trading experiences. As they say, those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.

PEG LEG
 
Quote from jpomerenke:

Basically id like to get it were it is connected to your order entry platform and automatically gets all information data wise ....and then you just fill in stuff like expectations, mood.....stuff the computer dont know...takes a few seonds after trade and then it saves to a book format or some sort....also would like to program some statistics calcs into in the future...like for example....being able to see what timeframe was worst for you to trade in (example 11-12 maybe) and other stats like that.
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This was done by some TradeStation traders from Seattle many years ago and they ran into a problem about the usefulness of it because it did no calculations in their first beta version...

If I remember correctly...because its a Trade Journal...traders still need to print out the journal for later review regardless if it was connected to the order execution platform or not...

Therefore...via this print process...you can accomplish the same task simply by just printing out your daily trade statement...

takes a few seconds.

Yet...when they realized that...they try doing statistical work via calculations and that's where they ran into all kinds of problems and didn't have the funds, energy and time to follow through on that project.

However, if you can do such...the statistics or calculations stuff would be the key aspect for getting traders to use it in my opinion.

Every trader has something different they would be interested in via having automated statistics generated about their trading...

Therefore...you may need to may a lot of statistics categories just so that you cover most traders interest...

Here are my own interest that would provide valuable info about my trade methodology:

1. How long it took me to exit my first group of contracts

2. How long it took me to exit my next group of contracts

3. Total time in the trade

4. Average time of Trade entry

5. Number of trades or percentage of trades enter in a specific time period I've asked it to calculate

6. Number or percentage of profitable Long positions...same for Short positions

7. Number or percentage of losers Long positions...same for Short positions

8. Time zone where most of my profits are occuring...same for losses

9. The ability to input a name for my trade signals and then ask for the numbers or percentage or results of such trade signals if I type in the trade signal name

10. Include a pivot point calculator that has an option to be generated among the info that gets printed out.

11. So many other stuff that I may not think is important today but may be important tomorrow :cool:

By now...in my opinion...that would be the value of an automated Trading Journal because without such...

Just click the PRINT button of you daily broker trade statement and you have the same thing.

As for the other stuff like reasons for the trade, emotional or psychological state prior, during and after each trade...

(I do such for the above in my own journal via having a 1 to 5 star rating system)

this can easily be accomplish quickly by having a rating system.

Simply...there are tons of Trade Journal templates in spreadsheet format or word processor format...

where traders print them out and fill in the blanks for each trade.

I have my own...take it to the printing shop and let them print up hundreds of copies for 0.01 cents per page.

However...the statistics or calculations stuff you mentioned...

that would be nice.

NihabaAshi
 
I have been trading almost 5 years. For me, a journal is the single most important part of my trading. I will note almost anything from good/bad trades to my emotions or mood.
Many times I will be writing the same thing over and over again. It helps to avoid those things that one shouldn't be doing. "What not to do". This will help to make those mistakes less frequently. Instead of screwing up once a day, it may happen once a week or once a month.
There are surely those who can trade successfully without a journal. To me its a must, takes only 5-10 minutes a day. It may just turn a poor trader into an average trader, or even better, an average trader into a good trader, or better yet, a good trader into a GREAT trader.
There is no excuse for not writing a journal. Find the time...
 
Quote from mmmarkus:

To me its a must, takes only 5-10 minutes a day. It may just turn a poor trader into an average trader, or even better, an average trader into a good trader, or better yet, a good trader into a GREAT trader.
There is no excuse for not writing a journal. Find the time...
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I agree.

A journal is like a feedback loop...showing us what we did right and what we did wrong. You cannot learn without feedback. Some are able to mentally note everything that happens and learn without the feedback of a journal, but IMHO a journal kept daily has a better memory than we do, especially because the human mind likes to selectively filter past events based on emotional pain and/or ecstasy.

PEG LEG
 
Quote from NihabaAshi:



This was done by some TradeStation traders from Seattle many years ago and they ran into a problem about the usefulness of it because it did no calculations in their first beta version...

If I remember correctly...because its a Trade Journal...traders still need to print out the journal for later review regardless if it was connected to the order execution platform or not...

Therefore...via this print process...you can accomplish the same task simply by just printing out your daily trade statement...

takes a few seconds.

Yet...when they realized that...they try doing statistical work via calculations and that's where they ran into all kinds of problems and didn't have the funds, energy and time to follow through on that project.

However, if you can do such...the statistics or calculations stuff would be the key aspect for getting traders to use it in my opinion.

Every trader has something different they would be interested in via having automated statistics generated about their trading...

Therefore...you may need to may a lot of statistics categories just so that you cover most traders interest...

Here are my own interest that would provide valuable info about my trade methodology:

1. How long it took me to exit my first group of contracts

2. How long it took me to exit my next group of contracts

3. Total time in the trade

4. Average time of Trade entry

5. Number of trades or percentage of trades enter in a specific time period I've asked it to calculate

6. Number or percentage of profitable Long positions...same for Short positions

7. Number or percentage of losers Long positions...same for Short positions

8. Time zone where most of my profits are occuring...same for losses

9. The ability to input a name for my trade signals and then ask for the numbers or percentage or results of such trade signals if I type in the trade signal name

10. Include a pivot point calculator that has an option to be generated among the info that gets printed out.

11. So many other stuff that I may not think is important today but may be important tomorrow :cool:

By now...in my opinion...that would be the value of an automated Trading Journal because without such...

Just click the PRINT button of you daily broker trade statement and you have the same thing.

As for the other stuff like reasons for the trade, emotional or psychological state prior, during and after each trade...

(I do such for the above in my own journal via having a 1 to 5 star rating system)

this can easily be accomplish quickly by having a rating system.

Simply...there are tons of Trade Journal templates in spreadsheet format or word processor format...

where traders print them out and fill in the blanks for each trade.

I have my own...take it to the printing shop and let them print up hundreds of copies for 0.01 cents per page.

However...the statistics or calculations stuff you mentioned...

that would be nice.

NihabaAshi
More...

That is completely different from what we are doing.... We plan on having it in a book type format and easy access to whatever you are looking for...but printing out your trades from your broker is nothing close to a journal...the trade data imo is only 25% of a journal if that....
and the reason im here is asking you guys for feedback and what you would like to see in the project...and dont worry..funding and time is no problem with my partner and I...
http://www.bdgsoftware.com/ATJ/ (----sign up to be a beta tester when released and also give us feedback...

By the way...your 1-11 list of things you would like to see on it....most of them are allready on the list of things to be programed into it :D
 
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