A trading journal: what to record, what to measure and how to review trades
A trading journal works only if you fill it in the same way after every trade and read it once a week. Here is the minimum that pays off.
What to record for every trade:
- instrument, direction, entry and exit time;
- entry, stop, target and risk as a percentage of the account;
- the setup: which rule you entered on (if there is none, write "no signal");
- the result in R, meaning fractions of risk: money changes with position size, R does not;
- a chart screenshot and one line about your state: calm, rushed, revenge-trading.
Five metrics are enough:
- Win rate together with average R. A 40% win rate with a 2R average win beats 70% with a 3R loss.
- Expectancy per trade (average R). A positive number means the system is in profit.
- Profit factor: total profit divided by total loss.
- Maximum drawdown and the longest losing streak.
- Slices by instrument, time of day and setup: often one slice makes all the profit and the others eat it.
A 30-minute weekly review: mark the three most expensive mistakes and their common cause, find the trades "off plan" and count how much R they cost, write one rule for next week.
Typical mistakes: recording only winning trades, counting in money instead of R, changing the journal fields every week, keeping a journal but never rereading it.
I built a service for this, journal.kovalev.trade: recording a trade in a minute, MT4 and MT5 import, automatic win rate, profit factor, average R and drawdown with slices by instrument and period. The first 7 days are free, no card.
Full article with the diagram: kovalev.trade
#tradingjournal #traderjournal #tradersdiary #tradinglog #trading #statistics
Not investment advice.
