Yeah it’s quite handy to have a before and after picture to analyse In my opinion.
correct! gone those days when paper pen was needed to keep the records of trades.
Especially as most brokers will send a nice summary at the end if the day.
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Sounds like most of you folk are missing the point here with recording a trade journal - it’s not the same as a broker statement at all. If you’re just interested in entry, exit, TP and SL prices then you’re not using a journal in the correct way. The above data is the least important aspect of a journal - rather you want to quantify all of the variables that resulted in your trade taking place, this is how you are able to analyse an edge and expectancy of your trade plan. You can then look for these profit generating variables or combinations within in real time to replicate gains and avoid losses.
What use is a broker statement when looking at a trade that resulted in a loss…“oh yea, i’ll just never ever trade from that level again in that pair”
Let’s have some common sense, you’re just making your work harder for yourself?
@anon46773462 was on the money with what a trade journal should capture.
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You guys are so far off track here that you haven’t even understood the issue let alone have anything sensible to say about it.
A trade summary is absolutely nothing to do with a trade journal.
And, yes, even us veterans have learnt to use a PC instead of a pen and pencil.
Spreadsheets such a Excel are designed for analytical purposes and they are tools that are so invaluable to trading for that very reason.
One of the biggest reasons why so many of you beginners (yes you) lose your accounts or give up in exasperation is because you are too lazy to learn from your trades and systematically progress towards the light.
You have come to accept that misconception that it “takes years to learn forex” just because it is quoted by so many other naive beginners, and just rely on trading off the cuff or jumping from one method to another, trying this, trying that - without even bothering to understand what any particular method is actually based on - and end up going round and round in circles or, even worse, spiralling neatly and fluidly down the plughole.
Do your homework, study your trades, study the “what-if” if you had done something different. Build consistently, look for what is missing, reject what is superfluous, concentrate on your risk/money management.
For goodness sake, you are trying to develop a professional business for yourself - work at it, open your minds and don’t be so opinionated about things you clearly know nothing about ----yet!
Good luck will follow if you work at it although it won’t actually be luck at all! It will be the fruit of your efforts and fruit that you can be truly proud of. 
I am right now off to the post office to collect my new Galaxy S10+ - a little treat for myself from last month’s excess. You should be able to do the same and lots more…
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Well you can simply add your account to the monitoring service website like myfxbook, it provides all necessary data about your trading performance.
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hi mixm, i hope you’ve already appreciated from the excellent and helpful comments of Manxx and Mr Sandwich, above, that some posts here answer your question rather better than others, and are the ones to which you should pay attention
just to reiterate what Manxx has helfpully and accurately pointed out above, the three comments ive requoted here really are so far off track that their posters honestly haven’t understood the point, let alone having anything useful to say about it
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Yes, that kind of service is certainly a step in the right direction, but it is not the whole answer and tends to just offer an overall summary of various attributes.
A useful extension of such statistical analysis is to look at what occured during a trade set-up beyond what one actually did.
For example, I enter every trade set-up that occurs in the Instruments that I follow including the maximum profit and drawdown, duration, in some cases the day of week and session as well, etc whether I have actually traded them or not. I record which chart set-ups functioned and which didn’t and a number of other criteria. Against this I enter my own trade details.
After each trade and at the end of each month I go through the data and identify what changes/tweaks may or may not be sensible to reflect changing market conditions.
I actually spend far more time with my journal, or trade record, or whatever one wants to call it, than I do with my trades.
I realise this is not so feasible or necessary in the case of high volume trading, but I would suspect that most newcomers to trading are handling no more than 2-5 trades per day, if that.
In addition to the information that such a journal provides, it also helps to instil a sense of discipline in one’s trading and a more consistent application of one’s trading rules.
But that’s just my view of things, I have said enough here. Time to go and play…
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Yes, I keep a detailed journal of all trades.
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Everyone should if they want to do well I believe.
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I use MyFXbook for that.
It just makes sense because you can add your own notes and observations about why a trade went wrong, why it went right, etc. You learn faster that way
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I think it is always best for analysis purposes. It can be a bit of a pain but is worth it to see where you can improve.
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Lop, well it works for me and my profitable trading accounts.
What a great idea to record trades! I will start doing this, does anyone use spreadsheets to do it or something else?
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Keeping a trading journal and notebook is the best thing you can do for your trading success. It is a form of monitoring and evaluation since you get to record your progress, what works and what doesn’t. You only need to change your mindset to the fact that you’d now be trading to pay your bills rather than as a hobby
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How in the world would anyone be able to get a bird’s eye view idea of how effective (and progressively better) his trading system is without a “Proprietary” Recording and Reviewing Journal system… If you’re a beginner especially, you definitely cannot do without one. I took a break from my demo trading to create my journal when I realized how unstructured and inconsistent my trading system was. I use Trello Boards for my Trade Journals now and it’s pretty cool.
Here’s how my journal looked a day ago:
I could filter as many different data out of that if I need to.
As @anon46773462 said however that type of journaling is more appropriate to medium and longer term traders… I am sure experienced traders who scalp would have their own version of a trading journal.
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I understand what you mean, it’s a kind of trading diary. It should be really helpful but its hard to make reliable conclusions about trading mistakes or correct trades analyzing them separately, because losses are essential part of trading and trying to eliminate them can lead you the wrong way in developing the strategy. If there is a “natural percentage” of losses inherent to the strategy you can estimate it only on distance. Single trade won’t show that. That’s why statistical data matters and the bigger is sample the better.
You are absolutely on the money @ontario - at least in my opinion!
I just wrote about this on another thread, which I guess could be relevant here, too:
"Many of us veterans have tried many times to explain that losses are not a bad thing - they are the inevitable and integral part of a business/profession that deals in probabilities.
You will never avoid losses entirely nor should you even try to avoid them!!! They are the “overheads” of our business in the same way as any other business has costs to manage in order to make profits.
And the emphasis is precisely and squarely on managing your losses, not trying to avoid them.
You cannot be a trader and make profits from your trading unless you are active in the markets - we all know that. But if you are in the markets then every trade you take has a probability of success and a probability of a loss. The sole aim of trading is to ensure your gains exceed your losses in the most optimum manner.
A loss is only a negative function if the trade was taken/retained for the wrong reasons. Reasons such as contra to method entry rules, too large exposure, moving/removing stops in the hope that it will “come right eventually”, intuitive/spontaneous trades without justification, revenge trades, doubling up to retrieve a loss, etc, etc.
But when a trade is put on according to one’s pre-set rules and parameters then those that lose are totally within expectations and anticipated accordingly.
So how can such losses be ok?
That is the realm of risk/money managment. An issue that is clearly ignored by many new traders. The overall aim is to ensure that you know your overall ratio of losses to gains as well as how much are losses compared to those gains. e.g. if you know from testing/experience that you normally win 60% of your method’s trades and that you normally lose about 30 pips compared with an average gain of 60 pips then you know that you should make a consistent profit over a period of time.
You need to risk losses in order to chance winning.
This is only a very basic overview of the concept but the underlying aim should be not to fear losses but to control them as part of your overall strategy."
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Each trader decides whether to record his deals or not. There are several opposite opinions on this issue. However, keeping a journal or diary is considered good and useful practice. Personally, I record all my transactions in the sheet and additionally make screenshots of these transactions. Retrospectively looking through my transactions, I understand how I am progressing and what gross mistakes I made at the beginning. This is especially true for home traders who do not have the possibility of peer discussion and analysis of transactions. Perhaps over time, as the growth of professionalism, the need for this will disappear, but at the beginning of a career it is very useful. I am more than sure that we should not neglect this practice.