I started trading in October 2007 and I have entered every Forex currency trade into a journal, give or take a few that I forgot to take screenshots of. (I still entered the trade details for those trades.) Journaling my trades is something I became obsessive about when I first started trading six years ago.
Being a database designer in FileMaker Pro, I decided to make a database that would store and show my trade screenshots along with all the trade details, so I could go back and analyze my progress.
My thoughts on journaling your trades are, if you’re not doing it you’re not treating your trading like a business, and are probably just gambling your money away. Why? Because in any endeavor you try to master, you have to have some information/feedback showing what you did, and what you are doing right or wrong. Without a journal/diary, how can you accomplish this?
Some professional traders say that it is not as important to journal once you become proficient at trading. I disagree because you should always be evaluating your progress, beginner or professional.
So what should you journal? I think a good journal should allow you to archive screenshots of your trades. Enter all of the trade details, such as enter and exit prices, time entered and time exited, gain or loss amount, etc. Most important, there should also be a place to enter how you felt during the trade and why you placed the trade.
You could use an Excel spreadsheet to accomplish this, but you are not going to be able to store the screenshots with each trade. My journal, The4xJournal, can archive screenshots and even archive videos of your trades. It can hold up to 8 terabytes of trades per database and a field can hold 2 GB of information.
You could also save your broker reports, but they will be lacking a lot of important information about each trade.
I hate to end this blog post with a sales pitch, but I want you to give my Forex Journal a try. It took me over 3 years to make and 6 years to perfect as I added features that users requested. Users from the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, Malaysia, South Africa, Japan, New Zealand, Poland, Spain, and several other countries have purchased The4xJournal.
I know it works great, because I use it. I start out every new year with a new journal and archive the previous years.
The price is less than a good trading book, only $19.95. There is a free trial you can download (30 trade entry limit with no time expiration). Just click on the image or link below to give it a try.
