What to log on every trade
Keep it short enough that you'll actually do it. Five fields are enough:
- The setup — e.g. "bull flag breakout above EMA21."
- The entry, stop, and target — pre-defined, before you click.
- The actual P/L.
- A plan-adherence score, 1–5 — did you follow your own rules?
- One sentence on what you'd do differently.
The most important field
Plan-adherence, not P/L. A losing trade where you followed your plan perfectly is a good trade. A winning trade where you broke every rule is a dangerous one — it teaches you that breaking rules pays. Score the behavior, not the outcome.
How to read your own data
After 30–50 trades, patterns emerge that you'd never notice in the moment. The questions to ask your journal:
- Does discipline pay? Compare your average result on trades scored 4–5 versus 1–2. For almost everyone, the gap is enormous — that gap is your real edge.
- Which setup actually makes money? You may find one setup carries your whole account while another quietly bleeds it.
- When do you lose? Specific times of day, specific emotional states, specific market conditions. The journal makes these visible.
Make it frictionless
The best journal is the one you'll keep. Our Trade Journal tool does the math for you — win rate, profit factor, expectancy, and an automatic plan-adherence insight — and any trade you take in the simulator lands there automatically. You can also log real trades by hand and export everything to CSV or JSON for a permanent record.
You can't improve what you don't measure. The journal turns "I think I overtrade" into "I lose money on every trade after my third of the day" — and now you have a rule to make.