What's the best way to organize all your trading notes?

M

mizhael

Hi all,

We browse all many pieces of info everyday... I feel I am on computer 16 hours a day... lots of info pre-trading, during trading and post-trading...

I figured that I often take notes of the following:

1. Browsing Internet - ET, Financial Times, WSJ, lots of blogs, lots of websites such as SeekingAlpha, etc.

2. PDF files where contents are text-based - various notes, books, papers, articles, etc.

3. PDF files where contents are image-based - various scanned notes, books, articles, etc. (in order to extract text out, we have to OCR the pages and recognize image into text)

4. Kindle books from Amazon (I heard those Kindle books can be converted into PDF files, not sure whether the converted results are text-based or image-based PDF files)

5. Other pieces such as Word files, Powerpoint files, images (stock-charts, screenshots, etc.)

Is there a way to organize all these pieces into one software/database so in the future we could reference/search the notes?

For example, in an ideal case, I would read a PDF file, highlight/annotate it, and save the file with annotations/comments. And the notes info will be stored in the software and in the future, I could retrieve my notes together with the nearby contexts in the PDF file via searching...

It's like keeping track of all our papers/class-notes while we were at school...

How to do this?

I feel that every day I read a lot good stuff (e.g. from ET) and I have never been able to keep track of them...

(Of course I can save the whole webpage, but that's a bit awkward, right?)
 
copy and paste everything onto your google blog.

Quote from mizhael:

Hi all,

We browse all many pieces of info everyday... I feel I am on computer 16 hours a day... lots of info pre-trading, during trading and post-trading...

I figured that I often take notes of the following:

1. Browsing Internet - ET, Financial Times, WSJ, lots of blogs, lots of websites such as SeekingAlpha, etc.

2. PDF files where contents are text-based - various notes, books, papers, articles, etc.

3. PDF files where contents are image-based - various scanned notes, books, articles, etc. (in order to extract text out, we have to OCR the pages and recognize image into text)

4. Kindle books from Amazon (I heard those Kindle books can be converted into PDF files, not sure whether the converted results are text-based or image-based PDF files)

5. Other pieces such as Word files, Powerpoint files, images (stock-charts, screenshots, etc.)

Is there a way to organize all these pieces into one software/database so in the future we could reference/search the notes?

For example, in an ideal case, I would read a PDF file, highlight/annotate it, and save the file with annotations/comments. And the notes info will be stored in the software and in the future, I could retrieve my notes together with the nearby contexts in the PDF file via searching...

It's like keeping track of all our papers/class-notes while we were at school...

How to do this?

I feel that every day I read a lot good stuff (e.g. from ET) and I have never been able to keep track of them...

(Of course I can save the whole webpage, but that's a bit awkward, right?)
More...
 
Quote from kgharris:

Evernote.

http://evernote.com/
More...

It has annual fee - of course my usage will be in the premium category:

-----------------------------------
"Free" and "Premium" accounts

The free online service has monthly usage limitations (currently 60 MB/month), and displays a "usage" meter. A premium service is also available that currently costs $5 per month or $45 per year, and currently offers 1,000 MB/month usage.

As well as the larger per-month upload limit, the premium service features faster word recognition in images, greater security and text searching within PDF files, and removes restrictions on the range of file formats (e.g. textfiles) that can be synchronised.

The free service is supported by advertising, on both the web interface and in the application. The premium service allows the user to turn off this advertising.

Free service also does not allow files be available offline. Sometimes it does make them available from cache but that can cause conflicts when synced.

All Evernote accounts, both free and premium, have a maximum limit of 100,000 notes and 250 notebooks. Evernote account limits
 
I hope by using either OneNote or EverNote...

From now on I can buy only Kindle books from Amazon, then I will convert Kindle books into PDF files and keep notes in OneNote or EverNote, all searchable...(notes/comments/highlighted texts plus the original pdf saved together)

Any thoughts about this approach?
 
Call me paranoid but I don't believe in the "cloud" approach of storing your own data/notes in some servers, especially when unencrypted, just to access it online. I think evernote and Google blog would be in this catagory.

I use Microsoft Office (which includes OneNotes) and store all files locally. They would be in .DOCX .PPTX .XLSX .TXT and .PDF formats. I create some OneNote pages which provides a summary paragraph and then a link to the documents for "point and click" to open.

If you structure your folders right, you can zip up and copy the entire "library" from your primary organizing device (desktop, laptop) to your read-only device (e.g. ipad). Or have some software to sync up the files.

Make your folder as "indexed" in windows. You can do a full-text search in the contents of your document. Not as good as google search but it's okay. I haven't tried installing the Google indexing software on my computer because I in general don't like what the Google software does behind my back. (The burden of using "free" software.)

I will be interested to learn from others how they may approach this problem.
 
My approach might be a bit simplistic, but I just use a series of Word files. Within the Word files I have a combination of information, as well as links to useful Internet sites. I also have a few Excel files for some financial models.

So far it's worked well for me.

Quote from mizhael:

Hi all,

How to do this?

I feel that every day I read a lot good stuff (e.g. from ET) and I have never been able to keep track of them...

(Of course I can save the whole webpage, but that's a bit awkward, right?)
More...
 
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