What Must Be on Your Forex trading journal?

Apart from just entries, there are very important items you must add on your forex trading journal.

Taking notes of your trades, signal setups, emotions, decisions and trading method.

In other words, a trading Journal is a log that you can use to record your trading activities.

This is a practice done by traders to keep track of their trading performance overtime.

The same reason why companies carry out record keeping, athletes track their performances is why you need a trading journal.

For example, what you consider for a viable setup, why you think you should take that trade and why you chose those stop and target levels?

You should have that in your trading Journal so that you can track what makes your system work better or see where it needs improvement.

Let’s see what to add on your forex trading journal

What you should add on your forex trading journal

Since you need a trading journal to track down your trading process. You must consider all the activities you do in your before, during and after trading.

Before trading/pre-trading

Your pre-trading involves;

• Date of entry and exit
• Trade entry/stops/targets
• Trade risk and Trade size.
• Why you are making the trade.
• How you decided on the entry.
• How you have decided on the stop loss level and the target levels.
• Lastly, how you feel about the trade setup and your decision making process.

 During trading

• How do you feel after taking a trade
• What do you have to do to manage the trade
• Is the trade going as expected, any unexpected events in the market
• Take a picture of your trading setup just after taking a trade

After closing a trade

• Take a picture of your trading set up after closing trade
• Trade results; profit or loss
• How you managed the trade
• Did you follow your plan or not?
• Do feel bad for taking that trade or do you regret your decision

A trading journal helps you to track your personal performance.

This gives you an opportunity to see when and how often you traded, successful and unsuccessful trades, the time frame and currency pairs.

Add to your forex trading journal the above items you hadn’t considered yet.

Why you should make A trading journal part of your trading routine

For a journal to give clear and dependable results, you need to have consistency in your routine.

If  you make a journal part of your routine, it will also become easy for you to follow.

Reasons why you must have a journal

1. If you write down every trade you take, it means before you take another trade, you get a chance to review the previous trades.
2. This gives you confidence to take another trade and also protects you from making similar mistakes.
3. It also helps you to look back and see what trades worked and those that didn’t work and note the difference. Or how you incorrectly managed a trade.
4.       From this, you will learn what to consider in the next trade and how you should trade in the     future. 
5.      A journal provides information about your trading plan. 
   

   It is therefore is one way for monitoring your personal performance and the systems performance.

6. On the journal, you can review your trade remarks, decisions and psychology.  This helps you to know how far you have come and how much you need to work to get to where you want to be.
7. Keeping records gives you a personal responsibility for your actions and Keeps you accountable for your personal failures and mistakes.

With this, you will be able to trade consistently with self-discipline and confidence in the market.

In addition,you should maintain a routine to always examine and focus on each individual element every time you interact with the market.