For Business

Trading Psychology

What to Write in a Trading Journal

A journal entry is eight short fields, the same every trade: the date, instrument, direction and size; the reason in the plan's words; the stop, the target and the percent at the stop; the result, how it was closed and a grade. This paper shows you what each field is for; the idea as a nutrition label, the same box on every packet; one line filled in for a real gold trade bought on 28 August 2025 and closed on 9 October; the page with the story of the price crossed out; and the Data Window on your platform, where the numbers are copied from.

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

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The eight fields

What actually goes on the line is eight fields, the same every trade. The date, the instrument, the direction and the size, so the row can be found again. The reason, in the plan's own words, so the plan can be checked against the trade. The stop and the target, and the percent of the account at the stop, so the risk was known before and not worked out after. The result, how the trade was closed, and a grade, so the doing is judged and not the outcome. Not on the line: the story of what the price did, and how it all felt. They fill the page and teach nothing, and they are what most abandoned journals are full of.

A nutrition label

Picture a nutrition label. Every packet carries the same box with the same lines in the same order, and that is the whole reason it works: any two packets can be compared at a glance, and nobody has to read a paragraph to find the salt. A journal line is a nutrition label for a trade. Fixed fields, fixed order, no prose, so that a month of trades can be read down a column the way a shelf of packets can. The label here is filled in for a real gold trade, which the next figure lays out in full.

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