I’ve been trying to keep a written trading journal and honestly I’m find it a huge ball ache.
How does everyone else keep track of trades. Do you keep a written journal or do you have a digital journal? For digital journals, do you use a specific software package or just keep a log on Excel or similar? If you use software, how much does it cost to use?
Keeping track of your trades is an important part of successful trading, as it allows you to analyze your performance and make adjustments to your trading strategy. Here are some ways to keep track of your trades:
By keeping detailed records of your trades and regularly reviewing your performance, you can gain valuable insights into your trading strategy and potentially improve your overall profitability.
I just track the trades on Excel. Each has a label indicating the strategy, plus any variations re entry criteria or stop-loss placement, TP etc., so I can back-track later.
An interesting find I got from this simple table once was that most of my losing trades went into the red as soon as they were triggered - they never went to a great profit and then all the way back past entry to the SL. And vice versa - most of the winning trades went straight into profit: they never got anywhere near the SL.
I use Tradingview as my primary charting software. I also use google sheets to keep track of my trades and it looks like this.
In the blue Columns I & J, I copy the link from Trading View for each of the three time frames and insert the link. You can then click on these in the future for a visual represenation.
Journalling is a pain in the arse, but then the vast majority don’t do it and that is prob why they fail.
Thanks for your insight. I’ve never actually heard of Tradingview or Google Sheets! Are they both free to use?
If you use MetaTrader you can simply “download” a journal with a lot of details. I’m limited cause English is not my native language so I can’t explain it to you but if you speak Italian, German or Spanish you can inbox me 
easy way would be just googleing
i’ve also never heard of google sheets (i think they might be what they use in cheap hotels with laundry problems?)
TradingView is wonderful, IMO
there’s a basic free version, which you can use for ever if you can stand the annoying pop-ups advertising the paid versions
you can also get a month’s free trial of the whole deal (i believe a credit-card may be needed, though: it used to be one of those things where the free trial was on a “book it and cancel if you don’t want it after all” basis)
a better alternative, IMO, is to open a demo account at Oanda and use their “advanced charting” platform - this is exactly the top-of-the-range version of TradingView but under another name, and is completely free with no catches or renewals or credit-card needed - and Oanda demo accounts never expire
(appreciate, though, that TV is a trading platform, not a journaling system)
Even a harder task if your a scalper. It’s a tough job. I have a spreadsheet but it’s work to get all the info in. Did anybody mention myfxbook?
My post on the issue at hand.
for sure
but arguably also slightly less important for scalpers (who tend to have a strictly rule-driven entry-method, and maybe a little less to analyse than many of us)?
Written seems so - well “old” to me, so I painstakingly “perfected” my journald with Excell over the years and it serves me well.
Will gladly give you a blank copy if you so desire.
I used to write. sometimes still write some important details of each trade. but generally i check trade histories and open trades details. I forget to write everything.
myfxbook is all I use to journal. I am too lazy to write all the crap I do on excel.
Thanks for the insight. Is myfxbook free to use and can you just connect your brokers accounts to it?
Absolutely free to use. You connect your broker’s account and all your account matrix is taken care of…
Thats good, I’ll check it out.
Does it just track you accounts and trades or can you use it instead of MT4 etc?
Not quite sure about that. I have never given much consideration to any other feature except the journal.
I don’t journal. Kinda eliminates all those problems.
Everyone journals, everyone takes yoga, wakes up at 5am to workout 2 hours, meditates for 30 minutes then starts trading.
Super weird to me. I just open my terminal, look at targets, place orders and go on about my day.
Keep it simple, but everyone is different I guess.
Hello Pauley!
I used to write them but it is boring.
Create a Google sheet, add (start price / close price / SL / TP/ profit or loss / … ) to that and you can easily have all of your trades. I also use a Google sheet to track the time I spent on social media!
That’s a useful tool.
Best Luck/
Thank you, I previously have been using the paid version of Tradingview, it is great. I do have demo at Oanda but don’t anything else than MT5.
