Newbie Journal Entry

[Humza 1]

@Carlos M. @Mike B

I just finished the Onboarding Class. It was super helpful, thank you guys!

I'm new to trading. I traded on the simulator today, and I want to build good habits as early as I can; I started journaling my trades. Can you take a look at my journal entry and let me know what other information is important to journal each time?

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1n0UBC4i0mtjbRtvwK5gE7s1YCkC3Ec2Gj5VqYFHQU6E/edit?usp=sharing

 

Thank you,

 

Edited August 11, 2020 by Humza

[Abiel 475]

Journal template looks good. Make sure to include the setup / strategy you used for every trade. If you place a trade without a setup / strategy, that should turn on red lights on your discipline and rules compliance. 

Also you can add a daily checklist of rules compliance to identify possible patterns of lack of discipline. Then you will define daily goals to overcome those patterns and you will evaluate your progress on those daily goals. Don't get too many goals at the same time. Work in 1-3 goals, daily, get improvement and move to the next goals. 

The simulator stage of your learning process is very important, is where good or bad habits are formed. Many traders build bad habits in sim, start trading real only to get back to sim to get rid of those bad habits.  

Also rank your trading days with a good / bad trading criteria, not with a "money" or P&L criteria. Some days we trade bad, don't follow our rules and we get away with a good profit.  This time we got lucky, next time we are going to give back that $ or more. So a good trading day should be one where we followed our rules, regardless of the P&L for the day. 

As you advance in your trading path you will improve your journal. Make sure you have a document with your trading rules / trading plan, review it every day before your trading session and during your reflection / journaling process. Avoid overtrading, journaling won't be useful having to spend so much time in so many trades.  Your learning and improvement will come from trading and also from your journaling process, so don't overlook the later. 

[Humza 1]

Thank you so much Abiel! This is great feedback and info!

[JasonV 0]

On 8/11/2020 at 3:58 AM, Abiel said:

Journal template looks good. Make sure to include the setup / strategy you used for every trade. If you place a trade without a setup / strategy, that should turn on red lights on your discipline and rules compliance. 

Also you can add a daily checklist of rules compliance to identify possible patterns of lack of discipline. Then you will define daily goals to overcome those patterns and you will evaluate your progress on those daily goals. Don't get too many goals at the same time. Work in 1-3 goals, daily, get improvement and move to the next goals. 

The simulator stage of your learning process is very important, is where good or bad habits are formed. Many traders build bad habits in sim, start trading real only to get back to sim to get rid of those bad habits.  

Also rank your trading days with a good / bad trading criteria, not with a "money" or P&L criteria. Some days we trade bad, don't follow our rules and we get away with a good profit.  This time we got lucky, next time we are going to give back that $ or more. So a good trading day should be one where we followed our rules, regardless of the P&L for the day. 

As you advance in your trading path you will improve your journal. Make sure you have a document with your trading rules / trading plan, review it every day before your trading session and during your reflection / journaling process. Avoid overtrading, journaling won't be useful having to spend so much time in so many trades.  Your learning and improvement will come from trading and also from your journaling process, so don't overlook the later. 

Hi Abiel,

I just finished reading an article Andrew wrote for Forbes and he referenced what I understand may be a journalling application. Can you guide me on how to get a copy of this? 

“Two of our members, Igor from Switzerland and Adrian from Chicago, started chatting on one of these forums. Turns out, they were both software engineers, and both were working on their own record-keeping solution to keep track of and learn from their trading mistakes. They partnered up, and after about a month, they shared what they had created with the other members of our community. “ Andrew Aziz

[Gene 8]

On 8/19/2020 at 10:56 AM, Jason Verbeke said:

Hi Abiel,

I just finished reading an article Andrew wrote for Forbes and he referenced what I understand may be a journalling application. Can you guide me on how to get a copy of this? 

“Two of our members, Igor from Switzerland and Adrian from Chicago, started chatting on one of these forums. Turns out, they were both software engineers, and both were working on their own record-keeping solution to keep track of and learn from their trading mistakes. They partnered up, and after about a month, they shared what they had created with the other members of our community. “ Andrew Aziz

He is referencing Chartlog. Their software platform is excellent and many BBT members use them. An alternate platform that is very popular is TraderVue.  

https://www.chartlog.com/

https://www.tradervue.com/

-Eugene H.