For Business

Trading Psychology

How to Keep a Trading Journal

Keeping a trading journal is writing the same few lines at the same four moments, every trade, at the time rather than from memory. This paper shows you the four moments and what goes down at each, in example times; the idea as a flight recorder, written as it happens and read afterwards; one card for a real euro trade from 28 July 2025, with its before half and its after half; what a kept journal becomes, a shelf of twelve months; and the platform's own log files, which keep the instrument half of the record for you.

Difficulty
Intermediate
Reading time
5 min
Pages
8
Reviewed by
Saman Rahbar

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The four moments

A journal is the habit, not the notebook, and the habit has four moments, with these as example times. Thirty seconds before the order: the reason, the stop and the target, as the plan says them. Thirty seconds at the close: the result and one word on how the trade was closed. Fifteen minutes at the review: a grade for the trade, which is not a grade for the result. Half an hour at the week's end: the week read back and one pattern named. A journal remembered at the weekend is a story. One written at the time is a record, and only the record is any use, because only the record disagrees with you.

A flight recorder

Picture a flight recorder, the box every airliner carries, painted orange so it can be found. It writes everything down as it happens, the instruments and the voices, in order, with the times, and nobody reads it during the flight. It is read afterwards, and what it says is what happened, which is not always what the crew remembers happening. A trading journal is the trader's recorder. It is written as the trade happens, in the words the plan used, and read when the trade is over, and its value is exactly that it was not written from memory.

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