What to write in a trading journal: the fields that matter

A journal fails when it asks too much. After a few missed days the whole habit stops. Keep a short list of fields that you can fill in less than a minute per trade, and make each one earn its place.

The minimum that works

1. Instrument, side, entry, exit and size. Most of it can be imported from the exchange.
2. The stop you planned before entering. This is the field that matters most. It turns profit and loss into R, the result in units of what you risked, so trades of different size can be compared.
3. The strategy or setup. Which written plan was this trade supposed to follow?
4. One sentence on why. What you saw that made you enter.
5. A checklist. Did the conditions in your plan hold at entry? Yes or no per item.
6. Your state. Calm, rushed, frustrated, euphoric. One word.
7. Fees and funding. They change the real result.

Why the planned stop matters

Without it you can only record that a trade made or lost money. With it you can ask whether the trade followed the plan, whether you moved the stop, and whether your average loss is larger than the loss you planned. That last question reveals most of the damage traders do to themselves.

Compare execution with strategy

When results disappoint, there are two possible causes: the strategy has no edge, or you did not follow it. They need opposite fixes. If trades that followed the checklist do clearly better than those that did not, the problem is execution. If both do badly across enough trades, the strategy is the problem.

How many trades before you conclude anything

Thirty trades with a planned stop is a minimum to start reading averages, and even then the numbers are rough. Fewer than that, treat the results as notes, not conclusions.

A twenty-minute weekly review

• Which trades broke the plan, and what was your state in those?
• Did any loss exceed the planned stop?
• Did you trade soon after a loss, and how did those trades do?
• What is the one rule you will follow next week?

What to skip

Long essays after every trade, screenshots you will never open, and ten extra tags. If a field does not change a decision, drop it.