You took 47 trades last month. How many made money?

If you had to think about it for more than two seconds, you have a journaling problem. And that journaling problem is costing you more than any bad trade ever will.

Here’s why. Every trader has patterns. Patterns that print money, and patterns that burn it. The problem is you can’t see your own patterns while you’re inside them. You feel like you’re trading well on Mondays and terrible on Fridays. You feel like your short setups work better than your longs. You feel like you’re improving.

Feelings lie. Data doesn’t.

The traders who actually make it, the ones who turn this into a real income, they all do the same thing. They write it down. Every single trade. And then they study it like their career depends on it. Because it does.

This is how you journal your trades the right way, so you can stop guessing and start knowing exactly where your edge lives.

Key Takeaways:

  • A trading journal turns gut feelings into hard data, which is the only way to find and protect your edge.
  • Most traders journal wrong because they only track entries and exits while ignoring the psychology and context that actually matter.
  • The 5-minute post-trade review is the single highest ROI habit in trading.
  • Review sessions (weekly and monthly) are where the real breakthroughs happen, because patterns only show up over dozens of trades.

Why a Trading Journal Changes Everything

Think about it like this. A restaurant owner doesn’t guess which dishes sell. They track every order, every night, every season. They know that the salmon outsells the steak 3 to 1 on Fridays and the lunch special drives 40% of revenue. They know this because they wrote it down.

Now imagine a restaurant owner who just cooks whatever feels right and hopes the numbers work out. That restaurant closes in six months.

You are running a business. Your trades are your product. Your journal is your accounting system. Without it, you’re the restaurant owner who doesn’t check the books.

A proper trading journal does three things for you:

  1. Reveals your actual edge. You might think your A+ setup is trend continuation. Your journal might show that your SBS breakout trades actually win at 68% while your continuations barely break even.

  2. Catches leaks before they drain you. That revenge trade after a loss? The oversized position on Fridays? The habit of moving your stop? You won’t see these in real time. You’ll see them in the data.

  3. Builds unshakable confidence. When you know your system hits 55% with a 2.5R average winner over 200 trades, a three-loss streak doesn’t rattle you. It’s just math. You’ve seen this before in your journal. You know what comes next.

This is what separates stoic traders from everyone else. Stoic traders don’t trade on feelings. They trade on evidence. And evidence comes from a journal.

What Most Traders Get Wrong About Journaling

You probably think journaling means writing down your entry price, exit price, and whether you won or lost.

That’s a trade log. A trade log is fine for taxes. It’s useless for improvement.

A real trading journal captures the context around the trade, because context is where the patterns hide.

Here’s what bad journaling looks like:

“Feb 12 — Bought ES at 6050, sold at 6062, +1.2R”

Great. You made money. But why did you take this trade? What setup was it? What was the market doing? Were you calm or chasing? Was this your A+ setup or a B- that you talked yourself into? Did you follow your rules or freelance?

You don’t know. Because you didn’t write it down.

Six months from now, that entry is meaningless. It tells you nothing about your process, your psychology, or your edge.

Here’s what good journaling looks like:

“Feb 12, 9:42 AM — ES Long, PDC bounce. Price pulled back to yesterday’s close (6044), held, formed a bullish engulfing on 5m. Entered at 6046, stop at 6039, target at 6060. Market context: trending day, above PDH, no major news. Emotional state: calm, followed the plan. Result: +2.0R. Managed the exit well, took profit at the fib extension. Grade: A.”

That entry is a goldmine. Months later, you can search your journal for every PDC bounce trade, see your win rate, your average R, and whether you execute better in trending or ranging markets. You can search for every trade where you wrote “chasing” and see that those trades lose 70% of the time.

That’s the difference between a trade log and a trading journal.

Exactly What to Track (The 10 Fields That Matter)

Don’t overcomplicate this. You don’t need 30 columns. You need 10 fields that capture the full picture.

1. Date and Time

When you entered the trade. This matters more than you think. You might discover that you lose money in the first 15 minutes of the session and print money after 10 AM. Without timestamps, you’ll never know.

2. Instrument

What you traded. ES, NQ, MNQ, whatever. If you trade multiple futures contracts, you need to know which ones you’re actually good at.

3. Direction

Long or short. Simple. But over 100 trades, you might discover you’re a 60% winner on shorts and 40% on longs. That’s a career-changing insight.

4. Setup Type

This is the most important field. Name your setups. PDC bounce. SBS breakout. Failed breakdown. Opening range break. Give every setup a label.

When you can filter your journal by setup type, you can calculate the win rate and average R for each one. That’s how you know which trades to take more of and which ones to cut.

5. Entry, Stop, and Target

Your actual numbers. Entry price, stop loss price, and profit target. This lets you calculate your planned R before the trade even plays out.

6. R-Multiple Result

Not dollars. Not points. R.

Your R tells you how much you made or lost relative to your risk. A +2R trade means you made twice what you risked. A -1R trade means you lost exactly what you planned to.

The formula is simple: R = (Exit - Entry) / (Entry - Stop)

If you’re tracking in dollars, you’re hiding information from yourself. A $500 win on a $250 risk (2R) and a $500 win on a $1,000 risk (0.5R) look the same in dollar terms. They are absolutely not the same trade. R reveals the truth.

7. Market Context

What was the market doing when you took the trade? Trending up, trending down, ranging, volatile, dead? Was it a news day? Were you trading into a level?

Two identical setups can have completely different outcomes based on context. Your journal helps you see which contexts favor your system.

8. Emotional State

Before and during the trade. Were you calm, anxious, frustrated, confident, revenge-trading, bored? Be honest. Nobody sees this but you.

This is where emotional control meets data. You might find that every trade you take while feeling “frustrated” loses money. That’s not a coincidence. That’s a signal to walk away when the frustration shows up.

9. Execution Grade

Did you follow your rules? A through F.

An A grade means you followed every rule perfectly, win or lose. An F means you went off-script. This separates process from outcome.

You can have a -1R trade that deserves an A, and a +3R trade that deserves an F. The stoic trader grades execution, not results.

10. Screenshot

A picture of the chart at the time of the trade. This is non-negotiable. Your eyes see things in a screenshot that numbers alone can’t capture. Support levels, candle patterns, the speed of the move. All of it matters.

The 5-Minute Post-Trade Review

This is the highest ROI habit in trading. Five minutes. Every single trade.

The second you close a position, before you even think about the next trade, you answer these four questions:

1. Did I follow my rules? Yes or no. Binary. No “kind of” or “mostly.” You either followed the plan or you didn’t.

2. What was my emotional state? Name it. Write it. “I was calm.” “I was chasing because I missed the first entry.” “I was anxious because I’m down 3R this week.” One sentence.

3. What would I do differently? Maybe nothing. Maybe you’d wait for a better entry. Maybe you wouldn’t have taken the trade at all. This question builds pattern recognition for next time.

4. Grade this trade. A through F. Based on execution, not outcome.

This takes five minutes. Do it every trade. After 50 trades, you’ll have a dataset that reveals exactly who you are as a trader. Not who you think you are. Who you actually are.

The Weekly Review (Where Breakthroughs Happen)

The daily journal captures data. The weekly review turns data into insight.

Set aside 30 minutes every weekend. Open your journal and look at the week:

Step 1: The Numbers

Step 2: The Patterns

Step 3: The Adjustment

Pick ONE thing to improve next week. Not five things. One.

Maybe it’s “stop trading the first 15 minutes.” Maybe it’s “only take A+ setups on Monday.” Maybe it’s “reduce size on Fridays because my data shows I underperform.”

One change. Test it for a week. Measure the result. This is how you get better, one small, data-driven adjustment at a time.

Step 4: The Reset

Write one sentence about how you want to trade next week. This primes your mind for execution.

“Next week I will only take PDC bounces and SBS breakouts, and I will walk away after -2R for the day.”

That’s your contract with yourself. You wrote it down. Now honor it.

The Monthly Review (The 30,000-Foot View)

Once a month, zoom out further. This is where you see trends that weekly reviews miss.

The monthly review is where you decide whether to add a new setup, retire an old one, adjust your size, or change your trading hours. Big decisions, backed by a full month of data.

Tools: Spreadsheet vs. App vs. Notebook

There’s no perfect tool. There’s the tool you’ll actually use.

Spreadsheet (Google Sheets or Excel) Pros: Fully customizable, formulas calculate everything, free. Cons: Takes discipline to maintain, easy to skip fields, no built-in screenshot support. Best for: Data-driven traders who love numbers and will actually fill in every field.

Trading Journal App Pros: Built-in fields, automatic calculations, screenshot uploads, calendar views. Cons: Monthly cost, less flexible than a spreadsheet. Best for: Traders who need structure and visual organization to stay consistent.

Physical Notebook Pros: Forces you to slow down and think, no distractions, tactile memory helps retention. Cons: Can’t sort or filter data, hard to calculate running statistics, no screenshots. Best for: Traders who find digital tools distracting or want a mindful practice.

The best approach for most traders? Use a digital tool for data capture and a notebook for reflections. Log your 10 fields in a spreadsheet or app. Write your emotional state and insights by hand. You get the power of data and the depth of reflection.

Whatever you choose, the rule is simple. Do it every trade. No exceptions.

How to Start Today (Even If You’ve Never Journaled)

You don’t need to build the perfect system before you start. You need to start and then refine.

Step 1: Pick your tool. A Google Sheet works. A notes app works. Just pick something.

Step 2: Trade normally. Don’t change anything about your trading yet. Just observe and record.

Step 3: After every trade, fill in the 10 fields. Takes 3-5 minutes. Force yourself to do it before placing the next trade.

Step 4: After your first full week, do a weekly review. Even with just 5-10 trades, you’ll see something you didn’t expect.

Step 5: After your first full month, do a monthly review. This is when the journal starts paying for itself in real, measurable improvement.

You’ll probably suck at it the first week. Your entries will be sparse, your grades will be generous, and you’ll forget to screenshot half your trades. That’s fine. Consistency compounds. By week four, it’ll be automatic. By month three, you won’t trade without it.

The Journal Is the Edge

Here’s the truth that most traders who fail never understand. Your edge isn’t your strategy. Your edge isn’t your indicator. Your edge isn’t even your risk management, although that’s close.

Your edge is knowing yourself.

Knowing which setups you execute well. Knowing which days you underperform. Knowing which emotions lead to blown rules. Knowing when to push and when to sit on your hands.

A trading journal gives you that knowledge. Not theory. Not someone else’s advice. Your own data, from your own trades, telling you exactly what works and what doesn’t.

The casino knows every number on every table. Your journal is your version of that. It turns the uncertainty of trading into a business with measurable, improvable processes.

Start journaling. Start reviewing. Start treating every trade as data instead of drama.

Your future self is watching. Make the entries worth reading.

Ready to apply journaling to a real system? See how to read candlestick charts like a stoic trader.

How often should I review my trading journal?

Do a quick 5-minute review after every single trade. Then a 30-minute weekly review every weekend to find patterns and set goals. Once a month, do a deeper 30,000-foot review to make bigger decisions about your setups, sizing, and schedule. The daily reviews capture the data, but the weekly and monthly reviews are where the real breakthroughs happen.

What is the best trading journal format?

The best format is the one you’ll use consistently. A Google Sheet with 10 columns (date, instrument, direction, setup, entry/stop/target, R-result, market context, emotional state, execution grade, screenshot) covers everything most traders need. Trading journal apps add convenience with built-in calculations and calendar views. The key is capturing both the data (numbers) and the psychology (emotions, execution quality) for every trade.

Can I use a notebook as a trading journal?

Yes, and many professional traders do. Handwriting forces you to slow down and actually think about what happened, which strengthens pattern recognition. The downside is you can’t sort, filter, or calculate statistics easily. The best combo for most people is a digital tool for the numbers (so you can run statistics) and a physical notebook for the reflections and emotional processing.

How many trades do I need before my journal data is useful?

You’ll start seeing patterns after about 20-30 trades, but the data gets statistically meaningful around 50-100 trades. Don’t wait until you have enough data to start, because the habit of journaling is more valuable than the data itself in the beginning. The discipline of recording every trade changes how you think about trading, even before you run your first review.

What should I do when my journal shows I’m breaking my rules?

First, recognize that’s the journal doing its job. Most traders break rules without realizing it because they don’t track execution quality. Once you see the pattern in writing, you have two choices. Either fix the behavior (set alerts, use a pre-trade checklist, reduce size on emotional days) or update the rules if they no longer match your edge. The journal gives you the evidence to make that decision instead of guessing.