Journal Introduction

Journal

When you are developing a strategy or testing a new trading approach - journal work is critical. We want to evaluate what we are doing and consider ways to do it better. At the OEC - this “journal” work is critical.

Use Pictures

We do not need to mark down the entry and exit and the profit or loss. The broker will record that for us. What we need for our journal - is something specific that shows us what we were trying to do. What sort of trading day was it? What did the setup look like? What chart timeframe was we using?

To answer these sort of questions - we want to take pictures of the trades we took. We can go back later and look at the pictures and ask questions. We can consider things after the trade and learn from our actions.

Trade Stats

The Journal gives us a chance to classify the trade as well; was it a TRB setup? Was it an inside day breakout? Maybe it was a -1/2 back breakdown? By reviewing the trade and saving a picture of it we can slowly build out a data-base of our trades.

Over time - you will have detailed records of the sort of trades you take - and a record of the ones you profit from (or lose from) and will have a better understanding of the trades you are good at - and the ones you need to work on.

Discord

All of this may sound great - but where do we put all these pictures and notes? I recommend people use Discord. You can create a new discord (private) - and fill it with all the trade pictures you are taking. You can build out channels too - so that those channels can be used for your strategies and notes and video links.

Trade Review

Trade review is critical to success! You will really want to sharpen your skills at reviewing the trade taken - looking for any way to improve things. This is not about “did the trade make money” - it’s about “was this trade executed correctly and should I have taken this trade at all?”

Take the picture and then go back and look at it. What time of day was the trade taken? Was there economic events that day? Was price at a key pivot or was it in the middle of a range? Can you point to the specific thing that triggered the trade? Can you point to the specific thing that made you decide to get out?

Skill: Practice

Before we can begin improving as traders we need to understand what we are working on. Some parts of trading require a skill in analysis and research; some parts of trading require behavioral skills. Some parts of trading just requires education.

To see improvement in your trading you need to understand these various parts and focus on ways to improve them individually; the steps and the processes are not likely to come universally.

Education

All traders have to get an education in the markets. Most traders seem to get this using various scattered sources and pieces but it would be better to get this from a reputable source and from with whole pieces at a time.

Reading or watching some videos about the markets will help; specific videos about specific topics will help even more. In the last 50 years there has been a massive amount of research performed and books / videos made.

Traders need to understand the history of the markets to understand how things like interest rates and FX markets connect with commodities and how that impacts manufacturing which affects corporate earnings...

Obviously this was an overly simplified example but the more we understand the various ways a market is connected the better we will perform our analysis and build a bias.

Discord

If you followed the recommendation to open a discord - you can collect educational material from around the web and put it into your discord. This gives you a “central data-base” of trading material that you can organize and work through at a pace that suits you.

For example - you can import a YouTube video and watch it in the discord - pausing to take screenshots and notes - which you can also store in the discord. Then - when looking at the trades you took today - you can compare them to the trade material you have been working on.