How Do I Keep Track of My Trades?"

How Do You Write A Trading Journal?

Regardless of what trading journal template you use, the journal is only as good as the information you put in it.

Trading desk with laptops, charts, and financial data for futures trading journal

Some traders find it best to write notes on a pad while trading and then add them to their journal template or software later.

Use your trading journal during the trading session, not just after the market closes. The trade will be fresh in your mind and you’ll save yourself time later.
Make notes on each trade before moving on to the next trade. This will also help keep you from overtrading. If your trades are frequent small scalps, do the best you can without missing setups.
Be straight with your journal, don’t lie to yourself.
After the session, review each trade and fill in any missing information.
Plan action steps to correct whatever needs to be corrected.
Reward yourself for a disciplined day.
After you journal, do whatever prep you need to do for the next day. Then let yourself unwind and forget about the market until the next day.

How Do I Create A Trading Journal Template?

Decide where you want to keep the journal. A PDF template? A word document? A spreadsheet? To make a useful trading journal template, the spreadsheet is the way to go. That’s what makes it possible to track all the data we just discussed.
1. Google Sheets is nice and free, or you can use Excel if you have it. WPS Office has a free desktop version as well.
2. You can also complement that with a notebook to jot down quick thoughts as you’re trading and add them to your spreadsheet later.
Decide what you want to track for each trade. For starters, you can use the trade variables mentioned above.
Add formulas to track all the R values, percentages, averages, totals, etc. you want to track for each trade.
Include space for written comments on each trade.
Include space for pasting trading chart images in the spreadsheet if desired.
Add an analysis sheet with formulas to help you organize and study your data over time.

What should I put in my trading journal?

Your trade journal should include:

Qualitative info: observations about the market and your trading.
Quantitative info: trade data, market data.

First we’ll look at the qualitative piece. What should go there?

You should note the following for each trade, as well as for each trading day.

Journal All Trading Decisions – Good and Bad

Every day, we make dozens of decisions. When we make good decisions, we need to reinforce those decisions even if the trade didn’t work.

We do that in our journal, noting why it was a good decision, whether the trade worked or not.

We make bad decisions, too. We have to catch these and analyze them that same day. We have to make a plan to prevent it from happening again.

For example, if I took an impulse trade when price hadn’t reached my planned entry yet, I have to ask myself:

Why did you decide that?
What was your thought process before and during the trade?
What emotions did you feel leading up to it, and afterwards?
What triggered those thoughts and emotions? i.e. was it FOMO (fear of missing out)? Was it a revenge trade?
When did you know you’d made a bad decision? i.e. right away, or only when it didn’t work out well?
How did this trade affect trades that came after it? How did it affect your day overall?
If you lost money, how much?
If you made money, slap yourself anyway.

I’m joking, don’t hit yourself.

But I know that if I made money in a bad trade, I reinforced a bad decision. I was rewarded for a behavior that will lose me money long term. I’m now more likely (subconsciously) to make this bad decision again and need to be very alert to the triggers, thoughts, and emotions that lead to it.

Make a note of those when they come up again and take a positive action, like walking away for 10 minutes, etc.

Journal Your Trading Mistakes

I journal my trading mistakes separately from bad decisions. It’s an important distinction for me. For example:

Let’s say I mis-click and get long at market price, when I was trying to place a bid lower. I didn’t intend to get in here, I didn’t decideto get in here, so this is a simple mistake.

Now, this mistake leads to a decision, though. The right decision is to follow my rule:

“When you make a mistake, correct it immediately, without hesitation or thought.”

To prevent a mistake from becoming a bad decision, I exit the trade immediately and reset the order where I meant to put it.

When I journal this ‘trade’ I note what happened and how I might improve. It might look something like this:

I mis-clicked and entered a trade where I didn’t mean to.

Frustrating. I need to be more careful. Can I change my layout to prevent this? Make those changes no later than tonight.
I got out immediately, followed my rule. Lost $200 but more importantly I kept my discipline – reward myself this afternoon.

If I had turned that mistake into a bad decision, staying in the trade against my rule, that second bullet might look like this instead:

I broke my rule by staying in the trade. My rule is to correct mistakes immediately.
- Broke a rule = have to stop trading for the day.
- I lost $800 on the trade by the time I got out, totally avoidable.
- I rationalized staying in the trade, thinking “well, I did want to trade in this direction, I’ll see how it plays out.”
- I feared taking the small $200 loss I had instantly after making the mistake, and I listened to that fear instead of my discipline. Why?
  - I had missed my entry on another trade earlier and was feeling frustrated from that.

This is all hypothetical, of course. But I’ve made mistakes like that, and I’ve made decisions like that. And I’ve analyzed it just like that, and that’s what’s important.

To grow, you have to analyze your trading actions, thoughts, and emotions objectively. You have to plan how to correct it as quickly as possible.

A trading journal is the perfect place to do that.

These aren’t the only types of notes you should record, they’re just common examples based on common weaknesses. Other observations you can include:

How did you sleep the night before? Rate 1-10. Consider sizing down if below 8, not trading at all if below 6. Make note of this to see if you have a pattern you can improve.
How were you feeling before the session? Before/during the trade? Physically and emotionally. It’s not woo woo, it matters. Trading sick or angry is a big leak for many traders and can even lead to blowups.
Rate your level of focus throughout the day and trading session.

Quantitative: Track Trade Data In Your Trading Journal

Just like the qualitative, you should track concrete data for each trade you make.

Track Individual Trade Info

For each trade, you should record each factor that could help you analyze the trade and/or large sets of trades. Common info to track includes:

Instrument
Entry time(s)
Entry price(s)
Entry shares
Long/Short
Entry order type (hung limit order, market order, etc.)
Exit time(s)
Exit price(s)
Exit shares
Strategy name / trade type
Initial risk: Dollar amount based on initial stop loss
Initial target: Dollar amount based on initial take-profit price.
Commissions in & out
Profit or Loss: Actual P&L amount after trade exit and commissions
% of Target profit / initial risk. 1-100%: If you exited without reaching your target or stop for whatever reason.
Reason for early exit
R multiple: Profit or loss divided by initial risk amount
Capital: How much money or buying power was put to work in the trade
% P&L
% Change in correlated asset(s) or indices during the trade
MFE (Maximum Favorable Excursion): How far the trade went in your favor, at the furthest point during the whole trade
MAE (Maximum Adverse Excursion): How far the trade went against you, at the furthest point during the whole trade
Chart image (screenshot showing trade if possible)
Tags: Keyword(s) you can use to sort and filter trades later, other than strategy name. i.e., morning, afternoon, scalp, swing, breakeven, etc.
Session totals and averages of each stat
Time window totals and averages for each stat, if you like to track morning separately from afternoon.

Of course, if there are other trade results or variables you like to quantify and track, you can include those as well.

Track Long Term Trading Performance For Certain Variables

Today’s entry in your trading journal can help you tomorrow, and next week, or even years down the road. But journaling is much more powerful than that.

Looking only at individual days, or only at P&L, is like owning a Porsche GT and never going above 35mph. You’re only getting a fraction of the value.

Looking for patterns in disorganized data is equally worthless. That’s why I suggested you include strategy name and tags with each trade.

This takes your shapeless blob of trade data and makes it sharp as a scalpel.

Using an excel trading journal or a good trading journal software, you can quickly filter and analyze your trades. Look for leaks, weaknesses, strengths, adjustments to try, ideas to back-test, and more.

For example, most amateur traders ignore time of day, which can be a costly mistake. If they analyzed their data, they may realize that they’re losing half their profits between 12pm ET and 2:30pm ET.

Instead, these traders push buttons all day long, and may take years to figure it out, if ever.

Without a journal, it’s easy for them to remember days of making money during that time and forget the more common days where they lost during that time.

Other factors to track…Not an exhaustive list, just some examples among many possibilities:

Different strategies work better (have higher expectancy) at different times of day
Days with big/small ranges might be great for your strategy, or they might be a big leak
OPEX, big data release days, earnings periods might affect your strategies in ways you cant see until you analyze a big enough set.
Being sick, tired, hungry, mad at your spouse, etc. might be causing a leak
You might be giving back more following big winning streaks
Are you giving back a lot in your breakeven trades? Maybe your targets are too ambitious. Maybe your entries need work. You might be able to adjust and improve your win rate.
Are you taking a lot of pain on winning or breakeven trades? Maybe your entry prices could be better. Does the data support adjusting entry prices for a better win rate with less drawdown?
Are you getting stopped out often early in the morning? You might need to loosen stops/adjust entries in the first 30 minutes. You might also need to size down to make that work within your desired R/R (especially until you figure out the adjustments)

Like I said, these are just examples. There are many more variables you can tag and track to find specific areas for improvement.