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LESSON: Keeping a Journal

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[op_liveeditor_element data-style=””][text_block style=”style_1.png” align=”left” font_size=”16″ font_font=”Montserrat” font_color=”%237e7e7e” top_margin=”27″]Keeping a trade journal can provide significant insight for your Forex trading business.

Your trading journal will track your performance and will highlight areas of your trading that need improvement or possible changes.

Without a journal and outlining all of your trading activities, how will you know how your method of taking profit is working? Or what your win percentage is compared to your losers? You won’t.

Your trading journal should be very neat and well kept, as it will be available for you to read through for years to come.

Remember trading is a business and all successful businesses must have good record keeping.

At the end of each month you should get your trading journal out and carry out a review of your trading business and how it is performing. What can you work on or what are your deficiencies? How can you practice and work your gaps in knowledge?

Do you need to go back to a demo account? These are all questions that can be answered at the review of your journal.

Your trading journal should contain the following:

• Entry price
• Stop price
• Original targets
• Date
• How much you are risking in % and $
• How you intend to manage your trade. For example where is the FSA or FRA and what will you do when price reaches this level
• Trade outcome including amount of profit or loss and also how you played the trade

They are all the basic accounting figures that you should record in your journal, however there is another important piece of information that you should record, and that is how are you feeling when you placed the trade and after the trade completion.

Our journal is all about our trading improvement and having a solid, accurate set of information to refer to.

Writing down how we are feeling before and after the trade, can highlight the possibility of major deficiencies, or problems in our trading, at the end of the month when we are carrying out our review.

We may start to notice that our losing trades, came when we had a feeling of not being 100% convinced about that trade. Or you may keep losing trades from a winning position and your journal shows that these trades happen when you are feeling fearful.

Please make sure you use a copy of the “Students Only Journal” which is an excel spreadsheet especially made for students that you can use to log all your trades and also has special spots for extra information such as how you felt before and after the trade.

NOTE: Don’t underestimate the importance of keeping a professional journal. You only get out what you put in, if you can’t be bothered to treat you trading like a business, do not wonder why you are not becoming a successful profitable Trader.[/text_block][/op_liveeditor_element]