20: Not Having A Trading Journal
(Sigh)….This is one thing I “sort of do” 50-50.
Keeping a record of every trade is important. A trading journal is simply a record of the reasons why you took a trade, a screen shot of the trade setup, what risk % you used, how many contracts you trades.
Why bother?
Well, you can go back to your past trades and analyse and see patterns emerge about your trading behavior. And you can clearly see what you did wrong because its there to see.
Do not depend on “account history” in the MT4 trading platform. It doesn’t show you the reasons behind those profits and loss, but your trading journal does.
Solution:
- start a trading journal…capture a screenshot of every trade.
- write down the reason (s) for taking the trade.
- write down how much you risked on that trade.
- after the trade is close, write down how much profit/loss you made.
- Analysis: did you follow/stick to the rules? Yes/No?
That’s basicly the structure of a trading journal. Its not complicated but we are so focused on pressing the buy and sell button that we tend to ignore this.
Maybe when you start a trading journal, you learn to prepare better before taking a trade? Will this cause you to “really think” about what you are doing?
Summary
Online trading currency is not without its difficulties as you have read. Many of you reading this will exactly know what I’m talking about.
The biggest battle is trying stop yourself from sabotaging your own trading account and at most times you will think that you are doing the right thing until its too late and your trading account is already busted.
Success in currency trading comes from doing the exact opposite of all the things many traders do wrong. It is easy to say but very hard to do, in practice.
Don’t forget to share if you enjoyed this.
You may also be interested in the following:
- my free forex trading signals and trade setups/analysis
- learn about price action trading with my free price action trading course
- new to forex trading? Check out my free forex trading course.