The purpose of MeetPips.com is to make it easier to maintain a proper trade journal so you can easily see if you are adhering to your trading plan.
We want to encourage the habit of planning your trade before you trade.
You need to have a game plan in place, BEFORE you even consider getting in the trade, that tells you how you will manage this trade, whether it goes for you or against you.
It’s critical to determine how you will manage the trade before you enter the trade.
You do NOT want to be making critical decisions in the heat of battle.
When you enter a trade, you should have already decided how you will react to every possible outcome. EVERY possible outcome.
Try and figure out all the possible variations that could occur and decide BEFOREHAND what you will do. You want to be a cold-hearted emotionless execution robot when in a trade. You want to be like Spock but without his human side. You want to be a Vulcan trader.
All decisions are made BEFORE a trade. You are proactive. That means you are not in that trade yet! So when deciding to enter a trade, you simply refer to what you wrote here. And eliminate any seat-of-the-pants decision making.
If you do take the trade, you already know where your initial stop loss will is placed, where your profit target(s) are, if you will trail your stop, where you might get out of your trade early, etc.
You NEVER EVER want to be thinking �What do I do now?�’ when in a trade.
The time to decide such things is always, always, always BEFORE you ever enter a trade.
This is why traders are required to manually enter their trade and answer some questions when creating a trade on the site. We want to encourage the habit of properly planning out your trade before you enter.
There should be a rationale for making every trade and we simply provide helpful ways for a trader to articulate that rationale.
Developing a trading plan and sticking to it are the two main ingredients of trading discipline.
Having rock solid trading discipline is the most important characteristic of successful traders.
A trading plan defines what is supposed to be done, why when, and how. It covers your trader personality, personal expectations, risk management rules, and trading system(s).
When adhered to strictly, a trading plan will help limit you from making bad trades and minimize your losses. This enables you to stay in the game a lot longer than if you didn�t have a plan.
A trading plan removes any decision making in the heat of the moment. Your emotions can consume you when money is on the line causing you to make irrational decisions. With the right trading plan, every action is spelled out, so that in the heat of the moment you don�t have to make any decisions. You just simply follow your trading plan.
Most importantly, if you suck at trading, you will know it is down to one of only two reasons: either there�s problem in your trading plan or you are not sticking to your trading plan.
If you�re trading without a plan, it�s impossible to know what you�re doing right from wrong. You have no way to evaluate your results, so you�ll never know how to stop sucking.
If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.
A disciplined trader is a profitable trader, and keeping a trading journal is the first step to building your discipline. This might sound simple or easy but I assure you that to actually get started can be very difficult.
In fact many traders give up after a while and rely on the logs that the broker provides.The logs or transaction history from your broker platform gives information that is at best marginally useful. Most of the time it gives information that is totally useless.
What can you do with the past price actions?
Nothing.
The information provided gives you no new advantage to your next trade at all. A trading journal is not just about writing in the prices of your entry and exit and the time you executed the trade. The trading journal is all about psychology, more specific it is about your individual emotional psychology before, during and after the trade.
For example, you decided to trade the EUR/USD and based on your trading plan you went long. This despite of the fact that your gut feeling told you that the trade is not going to work. Still you followed your trading plan, half way through the trade the price comes to about a few pips away from your stop loss and you decided to quit the trade. So you exit the trade. A few moments later the price shoots to your original profit target. Had you stayed in the trade you would have made an X amount of pips.
The information presented above is to help you write your journal. This is a classic case that probably happens a couple of times a day for most traders. We fail to stay in the trade, we fail to trade the plan and most of all we fail to distance our emotions from our trading! Give yourself a couple of these sorts of trades and I assure you, you will be seeing a big zero in your account soon.
Your trading journal will assist you to prevent and to cure yourself of these bad habits.
How that happens is that you record in everything you feel and do. From before the trade, to during the trade and after the trade had been completed.
Every real trader has learned the importance of keeping a trading journal. While all traders approach it differently, the key is to have some way to measure, track, and stay focused on improving your performance.
It is important to seek out honest and accurate feedback and take responsibility for your actions. Don�t let your pride or ego prevent you from knowing how well (or poorly) you are actually doing regarding your trading performance.
That is why you must keep a trading journal. It is the best way to monitor your trades and get quick and accurate feedback on your trading performance.
You will have a much better understanding of how you’re really performing and be in the position to improve that performance. It takes time and effort at the beginning to get a trading journal, but you’ll find after awhile that it will become habit and you’ll actually enjoy the work you put into it.
Most expert traders keep a journal and review their trades consistently.
Keeping a journal may seem boring and time consuming, but a trader can often learn more from reviewing their own trades, then from reading a book or attending a seminar.
Entering trades in a journal forces a trader to view the trades in black and white, rather than from an impression in their mind. More importantly, a journal allows a trader to step back and view their trades as a group of trades, and not as individual and ultimately random transactions.
In all as it been difficult laying your trades for all in the group to Currensee (no pardon on the pun.:D)I would think it would have a positive effect and put you Baby pipees on your best behavior when trading.