- Joey Fundora, from the Downtown Trader site, offers an excellent account of how journals can aid in the cultivation of a trading edge. He explains how he utilizes the journal feature within the StockTickr program to create a forward evaluation of his trading. He makes effective use of tags to categorize his trades, enabling him to quickly identify the types of trades and markets that are working best for him. Great article.
- Trader Mike tracks his trades with a spreadsheet and offers the spreadsheet as a free download. He follows his P/L as a function of dollars risked and leaves a column for comments about each trade. This enables him to identify specific circumstances--in the market and in his trading--that were operative in the trade. Helpful tool.
- Here's a post from Charles Kirk, summarizing Doug Hirschhorn's trading journal checklist. He includes 15 items, such as news and economic events for the day, the trader's game plans, and self-evaluation. This is useful as an integration of trading and trading psychology.
- In this article from my personal site, I provide a summary of trading journal features that have worked best for the traders I've known. I stress the use of the journal to learn from good trades as well as bad ones, and the role of the journal in preparing for the upcoming trading day. I also identify specific metrics worth tracking to improve your trading.
- Here's another take on journals from Downtown Trader. He makes effective use of the "R" statistic in his journal and outlines several ways of improving the bottom line.
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8 comments:
Brett
You have given us a goldmine on how to keep journals.
As I progress, I hope to implement the advance features, like R factor, on tracking trades in Excel sheets with my Trading and Psychological Journals.
Hsieh hsieh ni.
Thank you for this excellent post, Dr. Brett. After following the link to Trader Mike's journal, it occurred to me you could use your execution platform as a journal. For instance, Bracket Trader, a front end for Interactive Brokers, logs some interesting data such as P/L, Gross Profit, Net Profit, Time in Trade, MAE, MFE etc. I wonder what's your opinion about that.
Personally, a timely post for me. Just this morning I was thinking of changing my journal habits. I wanted to spend more time in practice (reviewing trades and patterns from my recordings) and only do reflection when I'd gathered enough thoughts, probably weekly. I felt that I needed to spend more time "overlearning" profitable skills, and from this post and the links I realized that my journal entries were mostly self critical.
Thanks AnaTrader,
The tools in the articles do indeed help us keep score and learn from experience!
Brett
Hi Jeff,
Yes, I think StockTickr is able to capture some data from platforms. Trader DNA is another application that does this. Very promising, as it automates aspects of the journal--
Brett
Hi Mike H.,
Great, great point. Many traders use journals to identify and work on weaknesses, rather than to identify their strengths and edges and extend those.
Brett
Nice article on trading journals.
Great article. My husband and I are just launching our online version of a trading journal + many other tools! Feel free to check it out for a free trail.
http://www.myinvestingtools.com
The formal release will be April 15, 2009, however feel free to try it now, we'd love your feedback. We can make it a useable tool for everyone! Please be patient as we try to fix the last few known bugs and write the detailed documentation, but feel free to email with any questions!
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