However, having a trading journal is worthless if you do not analyse it. Set yourself a time to go back and read through all your entries , at least once a month works for many traders. If you really want to do a dive deep into your trading performance, you can even put all your entries into a spreadsheet and look for similarities in successful or unsuccessful trades.

You can then look into ways to remove risky variables that tend to have a negative effect on your trading strategy and enhance variables that you know are working. Plus, having a forex trading journal will also help you build an effective risk management strategy , which should always be part of your trading strategy. There are plenty of things you can do to ensure your forex trading journal is bringing you value.

The only way a forex trading journal will be of any use to you is if you are honest with what you have achieved. That means being precise and logging every detail to the pip. By being completely honest with what you have accomplished, you will be clearly able to see where you are succeeding and where you need to improve. Specifically, what you were thinking when you made them. Simply move on and try to find a way to remind yourself to do it next time. If possible, try to log the ones you forgot to write down.

Of course, they will not be as accurate as if you wrote them down at the moment, but it is better than nothing. Further to that, steer clear from thinking that because you forgot it you should stop using it. This is a toxic thought that can be extremely damaging to learning how to trade forex. When it comes to forex trading, emotions are often not regarded as very important, but the truth is they play a very big role in how successful you are.

It often comes down to how stressed you are. This may lead you to not only make changes to your trading strategy but also your daily routine, which you may notice is impacting your trading strategy. Note these down too! One of the biggest things to include is how the market acting that day. Sometimes the market is tough to get in and out of unscathed, and no matter how well you stick to your strategy, you will still make a loss.

Further to that, make sure you include any important events that happened throughout the day, such as announcements from major central banks. You may even notice that in certain market cycles, your trading strategy works better or worse, or you may even develop different trading strategies to deploy in different market scenarios.

If you remember anything from this article, make it these key points. Want to learn more about forex and how to trade? Then sign up to our forex trading course!

If you enjoyed reading this article from Trading Education , please give it a like and share it with anyone else you think it may be of interest too. How to Keep a Forex Trading Journal. Why You Should Keep a Trading Journal The reason why I chose the name disciplined FX is because this is the trading skill that leads all other trading skills.

Instead, this behavior now happens almost automatically. Include basic stats about your trade. Include a section dedicated to recording your emotions This is perhaps one of the most important elements of your journal that turns it into something more than just a logbook, is a section dedicated to recording your emotions and actions that you took during the trade.

Can you imagine just how powerful this habit is? Include visual documentation If you decide to use a free digital journal such as a google doc or even a Trello board, you can take screenshots of a marked up chart, showing where you entered and exited, as well as any other drawings from your trade, which can give you a much clearer idea of what you were looking at when you made your trading decisions. You can download your own free copy of the pdf by following the link There are definitely other things you can add to your journal depending on your personality as a trader and the strategies you use.

SHARE THIS. Related Posts. Hey there traders, Andrew Bloom of Disciplined FX here. August Update July and August have been fantastic months for. I want to share with you my plan for my Funded Trading Plus Retry using a very short-term Swing Trading. Last month, I failed my Funded Trading Plus challenge. This was due to making too many changes during the challenge. Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published.

Previous post How to Create a Forex Study Routine. Next post The Most Important Question You Can Ask Yourself as a Trader. A picture is an easy way to keep a trading journal, but you must include certain things to make it useful when you look back at it for review. These basic guidelines for marking up your charts will make them useful for future reference. At the end of the trading day, take a screenshot of your chart, and paste it into a photo editor.

It should include all of the information above. If you can't see everything on one chart, take two or three shots, and save them separately. Save each day with the date as its file name, and keep them in a trading folder saved to an easily accessible location on your computer or in the cloud. Create subfolders for each year and month to make the files more easily searchable.

At the end of each week and month, go back and see what you did, notice common problems, and spot your strengths. These observations can help you exploit your strengths and highlight the areas you need to work on. Taking screenshots is more effective at capturing information than just writing in a journal.

If you do want to write stuff down, you can do so right on your charts or keep a written trading journal as well. Be diligent in this routine so that you have every trade you make recorded.

You have many options for how to create and keep your trading journal. If you want to include screenshots, then you'll find it easiest to use an electronic journaling method. You can use a note-taking app on your phone, a cloud-based document service like Google Docs, or spreadsheet software. Spreadsheet software can be particularly helpful, since you can include cell equations that quickly calculate your profit or loss.

Every successful forex trader knows that keeping a journal of the trades should be in the trading plan. Why is it important to keep track of all trades you make?

What can the analysis of good and bad trades help you with? How can you minimize the risk with a trading journal? Failure is a scary word for all of us. Ever since you are born, you are taught that mistakes are perceived as bad, embarrassing and should be avoided at all cost. While in fact mistakes are opportunities to learn, truly understand something and improve your chances of success when you try again. The key is, of course, to analyze the mistake and not to make it again.

Forex trading is no different. Mistakes are unavoidable and, instead of crying over the spilled milk, it is important to know when and why did you make it and what can be done to avoid getting into troubles the next time. Mistakes are the perfect tool to give a trader an immediate feedback and encourage finding out why the money were lost.

A trading journal should contain not only the detailed analysis of the bad trades, but also the notes of the profitable trades. What happened? Why did you make a decision to trade? Why did the trade go against you? What did you do right this time? How did you feel at the time of entering the trade? How did you feel afterwards? There is no such thing as only good trades. Every single trader goes both ways, however what is important is the overall profit that you make in a long run.

And in order to limit the number of bad trades, it is important to keep track of all the decisions you make during the trading hours. Another reason for keeping a forex journal is to stay organized and disciplined. Following the trading plan is far more difficult than it sounds. All traders are influenced by pride, greed, anger, revenge etc. at one point or another.

The discipline is necessary and since most traders cannot keep it straight without writing it down, a journal is a perfect tool to keep those emotions from poisoning your decisions. Keeping track of your trades is the key to the speedy improvement of your forex career. How detailed your trading journal should be is up to you, however there are couple of suggestions.

Keep track of the entry and the exit prices. This will show you whether the trade turned out to be profitable or disadvantageous.

Write down the number of pips you gained or lost. This will give you an overall performance right away. Record how much money you made or lost. This will give you a chance to find the biggest profits and losses among all the trades and figure out what went well and what turned into a bad decision. A great way to see a complete picture is to have screenshots of the particular trade.

You can write down your thoughts and ideas along the screenshot to analyze your decisions better. Keep an extra space to write down your feelings and emotions before and after the trade. This can show you whether greed, anger or revenge took over your logic at some point! This is not only beneficial to forex trading — you can actually find out a lot about your own personality!

As I mentioned earlier, whether your forex journal is basic or super detailed is up to you. The idea is to write down everything about the trades that seem important to you. If you think that you should record your thoughts and ideas, definitely go for it. The more you write, the better picture you will have at the end of the day. Tue, Nov 22, HOME COMPARE BROKERS TOP 10 BROKERS CHECKLIST Best BROKER Top US Brokers Top MT4 Brokers Top ECN Brokers. Bitcoin Brokers Demo Accounts Metatrader 4 Brokers Low Spread Brokers COPY TRADING.

For Beginners Forex Guide Platforms Online Brokers Currency Pairs Indicators Strategies Money Management Psychology Market Analysis Risks Copy Trading. How to Keep Forex Trading Journal? Keeping Track of and Review Mistakes in the Trading Journal Failure is a scary word for all of us. Why to Keep a Trading Journal? What to Write in Forex Trading Journal?

Write down the date and the time you have entered and exited a trade. Record which currency pair were being traded and whether it was long or short trade. How Much? Size Matters! Document the trade size the amount of lots you took , even if you are trading in mini-lots.

Plus or Minus Write down the number of pips you gained or lost. Profit or Loss Record how much money you made or lost. Market Session Write down which session you were trading in — New York? Visualization A great way to see a complete picture is to have screenshots of the particular trade. Notes Keep an extra space to write down your feelings and emotions before and after the trade.

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That is when you understand the therapeutic power of journaling. What happened? You must be aware of the risks and be willing to accept them in order to invest in the futures, stocks, commodities, cryptocurrencies, and forex markets. A good trading journal software or tool should have an option for you to add custom comments or triggers for your trading. How long you had the position open.

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