Best way to journal my trades

hi,
what is the best way to journal my trades.

writing down everything, like why i took the trade, entry price, close price, exit price, targets, stop loss, how i felt during the trade, could i do anything better, how i felt afterwards, emotions etc. being able to comment and add photos maybe.

is it, me saving pictures on my computer and writing all that in a paper?
or are there any free software/websites that can do that for me.

I am using an app called Trading Diary: it lets me attach chart screenshots (four per entry, maximum), profit, entry and exit strategy, how I feel before and after the trade, some general notes, as well as the time/day of entry and exit, etc.

It then adds up a few simple stats for you to show how you are doing…

MyFxBook is also really good but you cannot use it on a demo account…

Personally, I would think that, if you are just starting in trading, then a simple Excel spreadsheet is sufficient to log the actual trade details and result. I really don’t think things like % gain/loss, ROI, etc are really important at this stage. The main thing is analysing your trades, why you entered where and when you did, why you exited where and when you did, which session, etc.

It may be that images are also important for you and where you keep them depends a lot on how long you wish to keep them for.

Again, its a personal opinion, but I think the more you have to enter the details and results manually the more you are going to learn from them. Using a proprietary software may dull the learning process from a detailed analysis.

Basically, it is up to you to decide what is useful for you to develop. What are the areas you wish to improve on. Is it your strategy? your money management? or your trading psychology? etc. Decide what you need to focus on and then what you need to analyse it.

It can and should evolve over time with your own development.

For example. I use a spreadsheet that started life as one leaf and has now developed into 10 leaves including my strategy details, trade log, account transactions, monthly comparisons, charts set-up, strategy rules, and a summary front leaf with all the statistics and ratios that mean something to me. I start a new copy for each calendar month. A lot of it is now self-completing via various macros I have built into it.

The actual trade log leaf includes, in addition to the trade details, the exit reason, whether it was right or wrong, was it according to my strategy or not, max potential from the move and max pullback after entry. These help me to analyse my trading accuracy and assess how far to place my targets and stops in relation to the recent characteristics of the market for a specific timeframe (which can and does change over time).

I find by doing all this manually, I develop a much closer, hands on, “feel” for the market and can generally assess things without needing to analyse beforehand.

I have not actually studied what software is out there so it may well be worth checking - let us know if you come up with something worthwhile! :slight_smile:

are you sure you can’t use myfxbook on demo accounts? then what are my choices if i trade with demo accounts. i like to use softwares instead of excel, because it makes it more fun