Most traders spend years tweaking indicators and strategies while leaving their process undocumented. Without a journal, every trade feels new, every mistake repeats, and progress stays vague. A structured journal turns experience into data. It shows what you do well, what keeps failing, and which behaviours appear before your best and worst decisions.
The first step is simple: record every trade. Log the setup, market structure, entry reason, risk, and emotional state. Write whether you felt rushed, confident, bored, or frustrated. Do not only record wins or big losses. Incomplete data keeps blind spots alive.
The real value appears during weekly review. Set time aside after markets slow down and go through the trades as a batch. Look for recurring situations. You may notice that late-session entries perform poorly, that you increase size after wins, or that you cut trades early when size feels uncomfortable. These patterns are not visible inside a single session. They emerge only over a cluster of trades.
Next, extract insights. Group trades by setup, session, and emotional state. Identify your highest quality combinations. For example, trend continuation trades in London with fixed risk might show a strong performance profile while countertrend entries in low volume hours consistently underperform. This step separates what you think works from what actually delivers.
Finally, adjust strategy. Turn observations into rules. Reduce or remove the behaviours that repeatedly drain capital. Formalise the conditions that define your best trades. Add small process rules rather than full rewrites, then track the impact in the next review cycle. Over time, your playbook becomes evidence based rather than theoretical.
Journaling is not an extra task for perfectionists. It is the operating system behind professional execution. When you continuously record, review, extract, and adjust, your trading process compounds in quality even when individual weeks are difficult.
The first step is simple: record every trade. Log the setup, market structure, entry reason, risk, and emotional state. Write whether you felt rushed, confident, bored, or frustrated. Do not only record wins or big losses. Incomplete data keeps blind spots alive.
The real value appears during weekly review. Set time aside after markets slow down and go through the trades as a batch. Look for recurring situations. You may notice that late-session entries perform poorly, that you increase size after wins, or that you cut trades early when size feels uncomfortable. These patterns are not visible inside a single session. They emerge only over a cluster of trades.
Next, extract insights. Group trades by setup, session, and emotional state. Identify your highest quality combinations. For example, trend continuation trades in London with fixed risk might show a strong performance profile while countertrend entries in low volume hours consistently underperform. This step separates what you think works from what actually delivers.
Finally, adjust strategy. Turn observations into rules. Reduce or remove the behaviours that repeatedly drain capital. Formalise the conditions that define your best trades. Add small process rules rather than full rewrites, then track the impact in the next review cycle. Over time, your playbook becomes evidence based rather than theoretical.
Journaling is not an extra task for perfectionists. It is the operating system behind professional execution. When you continuously record, review, extract, and adjust, your trading process compounds in quality even when individual weeks are difficult.
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Disclaimer
The information and publications are not meant to be, and do not constitute, financial, investment, trading, or other types of advice or recommendations supplied or endorsed by TradingView. Read more in the Terms of Use.
Related publications
Disclaimer
The information and publications are not meant to be, and do not constitute, financial, investment, trading, or other types of advice or recommendations supplied or endorsed by TradingView. Read more in the Terms of Use.