Lesson 2: The 5 Major Trading Journal Data

In the previous lesson, we discussed how traders maximize trading journals to improve their system and profit from the market. Let’s review, 

1. Recording your trade helps you assess your strengths and weaknesses to improve your system. 
2. Journaling gives you extreme data to monitor your strategy and the means to adjust if needed.
3. Keeping thoughts and ideas about your trade performance helps your emotional triggers.  

In this lesson, you’ll learn the best practices to ensure you get the most out of your journaling. At the end of this lesson, you’ll have the necessary data to kickstart your trading journal.

Lesson Highlights

• All traders who are journaling their trades have the freedom to input whatever they want in their journals. However, traders must input their trade’s potential area, entry points, position size, risk management rules, and trade retrospectives to maximize the effectiveness of their journal.

5 Major Data for Trading Journal 

You use a trading journal to have the necessary data for future trades. You note everything you feel and do before, during, and after the trade.  

While there’s no one-size-fits-all journaling system, there are key data that you should always include in your journal.  

1. Potential Trading Area

When you trade, you should always have a plan for your entry. Remember, profitable traders are the ones who follow systematic trading.  

Finalizing your potential trading area (PTA) is one practice you must instill into your system. This practice separates you from gambler traders who simply make trades on a whim.  

Essentially, this represents the area you believe will bring an edge to your trade.  

Assume you plan to go long; your potential trading area must be above the current market price and below your target entry level. Likewise, your potential trading area must be below the current market price and above your exit level.  

The advantages of recording your trades’ potential trading area are: 

1. Strategy Evaluation: By journalling the PTA of all your trades, you can see which rationale yields profitable opportunities for you.  
2. Learning From Past Trades: By keeping a record of past PTAs, you can visualize what went wrong with unsuccessful trades.  
3. Refine Decision-Making: Monitoring and analyzing potential trading areas in your journal helps refine your ability to identify high-probability trading opportunities 
4. Build Confidence: Keeping track of your successful trades based on PTA will boost your confidence in identifying your future trade’s PTA.  

2. Entry Level

Unlike PTA, where you identify the area to enter a trade, entry-level tells you the exact market level to trigger your market order.  

Deciding on a solid entry-level before entering the trade ensures the current market trend is safe for your position. This way, you won’t need to worry about dealing with trades that don’t behave well in the market.  

Remember, being in a potential trading area doesn’t mean you should immediately shoot your trade. That’s why having a good entry technique would help you confirm the low probability of losing trades.  

But why data is important for journals? Recording entry levels allows you to evaluate the effectiveness of your entry strategies over time.  

By reviewing your past entry levels, you can identify patterns of success or areas for improvement in your entry timing. Also, it would help you improve your decision-making because you have visual data of failed entries and avoid repeating the same mistake.  

3. Position Size 

Your position size tells you how small and big your positions are and how they affect the health of your trading account. It represents how much capital you’re willing to risk on every trade. 

Your position size should always be based on your risk appetite and trading account size. If you think your previous sizes are damaging your trading account, it may be best to rethink your position sizing.  

But how can you do that? You can easily assess this by keeping a trading journal and putting your previous position sizes. 

4. Trade Management Rules 

Having a solid plan before entering the market is a characteristic that sets traders apart from gamblers. This plan is known as your trade management rules. 

When you set a trade management rule, you have a plan for whether the market goes in your position or against it. Consistently using this plan ensures profitability and loss mitigation.

Note: Most traders wipe out their trading accounts because they don’t have solid trade management rules. They make poor trading decisions because of the pressure of deciding in the heat of battle. 

5. Trade Retrospective 

Recording the retrospective on each of your trades will help you see what went right and wrong. This way, you can have readily available data and references for self-improvement.  

Here are some questions you need to ask yourself: 

• What’s the result of the trade? 
• How’s the trade management after the position entered the market? 
• What are to improve in any aspect of the trade? 
• How’s the alignment of the trade to the trading plan?

Consistency is the key when you journal your trade. I know, it’s easier than done. But with consistent data, you’ll have solid references readily available for future trades. For the next module, you’ll know which kind of trader you are.