I have started like a 100 of them but after a week - they’re gone. Any suggestion how to stick with it, maybe a freeware (or cheap software) that would do it automatically?
Just be determined that you need to excel in the forex trading business and then maintaining the trading journal certainly becomes possible. You can always download the trading history and just copy paste to the excel sheet maintained. I am not sure of automatic software.
myfxbook.com can sync with your trading account and record your trades. It will show you your trading statistics as well, but it does not capture your thoughts and psychology like writing a journal would.
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The idea behind a trading journal is for you to capture down your thoughts, ideas, reasons for the trade and why you did what you did. myfxbook may help you with the numbers but like poopoopotato (lol @ your name by the way), it doesn’t keep track of the psychology.
A trading journal sometimes is tedious and annoying, but until you have a strategy that you know like the back of your hand, you should keep a journal. Mine is private. I screen record my ToS trading platform with Quicktime and I talk into my computer going over the trade. Usually they’re 30 minutes long. It helps.
If you’re having trouble sticking with a journal, put a reminder in your iPhone or Android for 21 consecutive days to make a trading journal. It’ll force you to build the habit.
Best,
Jesse
I wouldn’t worry about “journalling”, [I]per se[/I], too much, especially if your concept about the significance of a “journal” is much attached to the word/name. It doesn’t matter much whether what you keep going is really a “journal”, per se.
In my opinion, what matters, as with running any business, is that you treat it [B]as[/B] a business, and that means that you [U]keep reliable written records[/U] of some kind, updating them on every day that the business has actually done any business (i.e., in this instance, every day you’ve traded).
Trading is a huge learning process, and it’s terribly difficult (for most people, at least) to improve, without being able to study and analyse what’s happened.
Becoming more successful is largely about learning to do more of “what works” and less of “what doesn’t work”. That means being able to analyse accurately and discover “what worked” and “what didn’t work”, which in turn means having good records. As long as they’re good records, I don’t think it matters too much whether they’re specifically a “journal”.
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There is no other way to make you capable to stick on the rule and system which you have made, except you believed tou your trading plan or system consistently although it doesn’t work as your expectation all the time. And then, you must consistent to create trading journal with function to note all transactions and its way to make decision so you could make evaluation in profit and loss condition then you could make consideration to minimize the loss and maximize profit.
This ^. One of the important parts is thoughts and psychology. Without this how can you really learn what cause you to pull the metaphorical trading trigger.
I find writing a journal of my trades difficult too stay consistent with. What i have been doing it looking at the daily or weekly (mostly the weekly) reports my broker emails me and I look over my trades that way. i dont know of a few software that is auto for this.
Journal is very important you are making a big mistake disregarding it. Keeping a journal is just a matter of a habit, so don’t spend your time searching for the right software, just go with the regular excel, but update it daily. Otherwise how are you going to analyze your performance and improve the results?
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You can use simple Excel sheets for that. If you do not have Microsoft Excel you can use free Google Docs and that’s it. Beside of that take small notes from past day on the real paper, that way you will do all that in a more solid way and not like now;)
This is fine! Doesn’t have to be fancy or high-tech!
So this is a do-as-i-say-not-as-i-do situation as I don’t write down specifically why I have bought and sold specific positions.
But it is so critical. It is a habit I have to get into. And it is a habit I would recommend all traders get into.
Having the answer, a record of why a trade was actually entered and exited is so crucial! I think this would be the closest thing to a Holy Grail more so than any type of system, strategy, indicator, or Black box software program.
I would imagine it would be one of the most important learning experience/tools of everything that is available. What it does is gives the trader a record of how they think, view, and interact with the market over time. Is is an opportunity to modify behavior based on the historical record!
I think it would help traders stop repeating history by standing on the shoulders of their losses and standing higher on the shoulders of their winners!
I think understanding why we take certain trades that we do is the keystone to success. The journal would allow traders to uncover and have a record of mistakes and successes, a road map of their thought process in decision-making up to that specific date.
As Banya said on Seinfeld, “That’s gold Jerry, gold!”
Listening to myself… I’m excited to start! I think a trade journal a simple line of why a trader took a trade- and why they exited a trade would be the single most valuable information any trader could have!
I might go old school and sharpen a pencil … They boot up a lot faster and never crash!
To finding out why we enter and exit! Here here!
It would eliminate frandlost - Flounder, Ring and Lost - the guys who crush your forex goals.
Let’s all start journaling!!
KC
A trading journal allows a trader to view their trades as a group of trades and not as an individual or random transactions. Always start the journal before the trade and then close it after the trade. Jot down everything and pay attention to your emotions. Just make sure that the journal includes observations about your trading, forex market and you of course.
I used to journal but now I don’t anymore. But for every trade that I take I will analyze it at the end of the day. If the position is open at end of day then I analyze the entry and stop loss placement to see if there is anything I could have done differently. When I close a position I will analyze the entire trade for entry, SL, TP.
For every losing trade or BE trade I will look at it carefully to determine where I screwed up. I make a mental note of the price action, time of day for entry and exit, my mental state and anything else that is relevant to get a better understanding of how I could have improved my performance.
Whether you journal or not, the key is to always be improving. Over time the small incremental improvements add up significantly to make you a much better trader.
Only journal what you need to know. You only need to know what you need to solve a problem. Define the problem, learn about it from the data you accumulate in a journal, and seek the solution. But don’t collect data that are nothing to do with the problem.
Yep. Keeping a trading journal is a very crucial task.
Hello ! If you don’t like to keep a journal, then take pictures of what you do. Demo trade, take pictures and keep the pics of the trades that worked and dismiss those pictures of failed trades and then, paste them in your Word Document and then download it PDF. This way, you’ll know what to do each time, as we say here in Baby Pips , “Make pips, keep pips, repeat” . It’ll work as a personal manual and will make huge wonders.
I find this topic very interesting, but been a newbies how will I start keeping journal, that is what and what will I keep in mind when jotting
Yaa you should know what you must include in a trading journal and what not. Otherwise its just information overload.
Trading journal is not very hard to develop, you just need to be very honest with yourself and very consistent recording each day’s entry.