JOURNALING


IN

TRADING
What, Why, and How?
 WHAT

• Regular logging of all your trades along with other

important parameters that need to be tracked.

• Logging the trades, with the context surrounding the

trades.
 WHY
• You log the subconscious to become conscious of it.

• Find patterns in your behavior

• Find errors you need to fix

• Find out how you can improve your trading costs

• Find out where your edge is

• Find what factors are affecting your trading

performance
 HOW

• Log trade plan before beginning of trading hours

• Log traded trades immediately after trading hours

• Log the context around the entire trading day

• Log the context around each trades

 PARAMETERS FOR
TRADING PLAN
• If you have a system, consider the following parameters
before your trading starts.

• The instrument you’re trading with

• Levels at which you’ll execute the trade.

• What would be the stop loss / risk

• What would be the position size

• What is the target

• When will you exit if target not reached

 PARAMETERS FOR
TRADES
• Trade instrument

• Entry price (entry price in the instrument, and register futures/spot/itm/atm option levels
also)

• Entry time

• Stop loss set

• Final stop loss

• Exit time

• Exit price

• Total cost (as reported by broker)

• Net PNL

• Whether you executed the system’s trade plan perfectly

 PARAMETERS AROUND
TRADES
• Day of the trade

• Whether price moved in your favor one or two candles within entry, or against
your favor.

• Mistakes you made

• Reason for the mistake

• How you felt throughout the trading day

• Any significant things happened the day before or on morning before trading

• How distracted/focused did you feel during the trading hours

• What did you eat, when did you eat.