Trading journal - Had a discussion about it and thought of sharing some insights.If you are a beginner for journal then its fair enough to start with simple journal with details like trade entry, stop loss, reason for trade , planned exit, actual exit, reason for exit,what is max adverse side price gone after stop hit,whats favorable move it gave after profit exit etc.This practice helps to give you idea of how much mess you are making in trading such as random trades,revenges trades,over size,quick exit,late entry,preemptive trades,micro management,impatience and FOMO, poor trade location etc.
Whatever you read or learn but unless you encounter theses issues practically by burning cash over and over for some time they cannot stay as lessons to correct.Once this process is done you get your own rules.
So,recording them to some extent is fine.But this basic journal stuff after some time hits boredom and we lose enthu as mostly we hit bad trades.Process of journaling doesnt take us further than giving set of rules.We repeat same mistakes and just record them as routine.So,better way is to turn the journal into our own learning book. It offers a structured learning as we derive everything practically from the trades we made or missed. Beyond a stage I have turned my journal into a recorder of facts and observations about auction such as
a)weird days with spike-what caused it,where rejected,what happened on the same day then next day b)what happens if b shaped profile low breaks heavy c)what happens if extension handle and singles goes on same day d)what happens on large gap down day and entered gap etc..
and also started registering data such as a) what happened when trade is taken when IB range is beyond 2x than normal b) what happened when IB is > 1.5 ATR c) what happened when trade is entered post 3IB extn etc
When we start writing about such scenarios,data their outcome and even about emotions along with trades, then it helps to gather more insight about trade setups/scenarios like how auction behaves under different scenarios.Most of my learning came this way.
Try to group trade journal entries under heads like gaps,spike,random trades,stop loss, spike etc then link them back to individual entries.For eg, If I get some insight from SL from a trade then that goes under SL..If I get some insight from gap then goes under gap.Some learning about orderflow or volume reading then marks under OF/volume.
When I group them like this to refer back to trades and charts it becomes good learning practice and most of my nuances and rules I derived from this way only.Excel, Evernote are good to start with.
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