Assuming you are starting to get into FX trading (for me getting back into it), how do you keep all the documents, notes, anything in a central repository you can go back to?
A written journal, OneNote?
Do you use something separate when it comes to strategies, news, techniques etc separate from your journal?
What system for documentation do you use?
The trading platform keeps track of a lot of detail that I don’t need. I would advise before you start logging data, decide what you want it to prove, otherwise you’ll be storing everything for ever and have no time left for trading.
I particularly track the strategy I was using for a trade, the entry signal, the stop-loss reasoning and the reason for exiting. Obviously, the market, entry and exit dates, win/lose and how much, but I could always get this and the prices from the platform.
So taking the trading journal out of the equation, where do you keep all of your “this is what I have learned about FOREX”?
It can be tedious and depends on your trade frequency, but I took screenshots of my trading terminal and annotated notes on the side. This way, it was easy later on to quickly go through my trades on tablet or picture viewer on desktop and look at my past trades and look for patterns I missed that were helping or hurting my strategy. I don’t like them too long because then I would never look at them, and not too short because then there’s not enough information to learn anything from them.
I feel as though every trader starting out should have a personal journal to put anything in, whether it’s forex notes, trades, strategies, etc. But, what helps me is a print out screenshots of the actual charts (my winning AND losing trades), and take notes on them, about why I lost the trade, or why I won the trade. THIS IS REALLY HELPFUL.
I keep a file of various strategies I’ve read about and/or tried, entry signals, that sort of thing. I also have on my market tracking spreadsheet the various correlations positive and negative between various forex pairs and other markets like gold etc. The rest is in my head.
It is comfortable to use Exel for trades + Evernote for your own ideas and interesting ideas from books/articles.
Another plus is that using Evernote app look through your ideas during free time or immediately write down interesting idea somewhere at the street.
Same here, but not Evernote. I used Zoho’s Notebook. Excel is just more than useful. I can recommend everyone to have journal or tracking like this. If someone don’t like journal, pen and paper is the good alternative.
Yeah, it is perfect idea also. We remember and understand much better all those things in paper book as it turns on other type of memory.
I bought a surface pro for this very thing, I have the pen, with a click on the top it takes a screen shot, I can immediate annotate the screen, and because its a win 10 tablet, I can use it to trade with as well. All screen shots save automatically with date and time, and should the need arise I can print.
It sounds cool. Surface Pro is really a good tab. I never thought about this great method to journal, thanks for sharing.
Buy one second hand, then they’re worth it, they cost far too much new, the keyboard also helps, and go for the best one you can afford, also, don’t get the RT version, unusable.
Sure, will think and plan right away for this. Thanks.