Do you journal your trading progress?

[GreatArkansas]

(....)
So, I want to ask the traders in the house, how serious do you take the journaling process of your trades and has it help you do better? Then I also want to ask, do you believe that journaling your trading progress can actually help a trader to improve?.

In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with doing your journal for your trading progress, and there's also nothing wrong with not doing it.
Since for me, I'm a busy person and I only have a few vacant hours, I started before doing journal, but sometimes I forget. So what's most effective to me is on some other exchanges, they have this feature like you can view your past trades, some analytics, weekly view/monthly view which will help you too where and how to improve your trades.

[shinratensei_]

I journaled just my PnL by simply exporting my transaction history, feed it to AI and tell it to create an interactive chart.

The hard thing to do is to journal my defi activity, UI/UX so scattered it becomes pain to journal a long list of transaction history, so far it helped me a lot to know where I'm at and how is my overall trading winrate which I assume going to be helpful for newbie to review their performances.

[jcojci]

I only check on my trading history weekly or monthly to see how the progress and how much I lost and profit. I don't do that too complicated because if I doing that, I can't releasing the lost feeling in trading. That could attract me recovering my lost which will be difficult so I don't take it seriously and just searching for other opportunities.

But some traders journaling their trading and check more details their lost trading to find where the mistake is. They might learns more about the lost so they can be better in the next trades but we have our own way in trading so we have a different things to do which will not be the same as others.

[Oshosondy]

So, I want to ask the traders in the house, how serious do you take the journaling process of your trades and has it help you do better? Then I also want to ask, do you believe that journaling your trading progress can actually help a trader to improve?.

I am not having trading journal at all, this is because I know the rules and the path I should follow to have profit in trading. If I am later controlled by emotions and not follow the part and lost money while trading, I would have done the same if I have trading journal. I do not see it useful for me at all.

[Dr.Bitcoin_Strange]

Most CEXs offer great analytic tools to track your performance and possible mistakes.

I'm not sure a separate journal is really necessary at this point.

Unless maybe you need to find connections between your trading performance and your real life events/mood/psychological state.

Not trying to undermine how useful AI has become lately for such purpose, especially for CEX that has enable such a feature, but in this cases it's not just about the analysis and performance, it's generally everything you did in respect for that trade, more about the last thing you said. Some successful trader would say, "trading is 80% psychology, after learning the technical and fundamental analysis(20%), everything else depends on you."
Some CEX that has the feature you are talking about might not actually have all the characteristics that every traders wants, that's why some people still do their journaling by themselves.

I'm familiar with this trading strategy

It's just a form of record keeping that helps you maintain consistency in your style of trading, it's not totally a strategy.

[Zlantann]

Most CEXs offer great analytic tools to track your performance and possible mistakes.

I'm not sure a separate journal is really necessary at this point.

Unless maybe you need to find connections between your trading performance and your real life events/mood/psychological state.

Not trying to undermine how useful AI has become lately for such purpose, especially for CEX that has enable such a feature, but in this cases it's not just about the analysis and performance, it's generally everything you did in respect for that trade, more about the last thing you said. Some successful trader would say, "trading is 80% psychology, after learning the technical and fundamental analysis(20%), everything else depends on you."
Some CEX that has the feature you are talking about might not actually have all the characteristics that every traders wants, that's why some people still do their journaling by themselves.

I'm familiar with this trading strategy

It's just a form of record keeping that helps you maintain consistency in your style of trading, it's not totally a strategy.

Everybody will apply the pattern that works well for them. I have heard some people say they keep records of their gambling activities. And they review this record periodically to ascertain how well or badly they are faring in gambling. They might find it helpful because the record could be detailed. But I don't find it helpful because most casinos have features that can help you track your gambling transactions.

sergiorus finds the analytic tools in centralized exchanges helpful and might not require manually recorded journals.

[Benhouse]

I learnt something just last night as I was watching a video interview of a few traders, these traders talked about the importance of journaling their trading progress, how it has helped them to learn from their mistakes and become better. What they usually do is that, they write down every trades they took during the week, every information about taking that trade, they will write it down, then on weekends they review the journey to check if they actually followed their rules and strategy. It doesn't matter if they lost the trade or not but they will write every single steps they took before taking the trade until when they closed the trade.

For me, I don't completely do that but I only take screenshots and later on I can revisit the screenshot, it helps me to also check if it was still the same strategy I'm maintaining in all the trades I'm taking.

So, I want to ask the traders in the house, how serious do you take the journaling process of your trades and has it help you do better? Then I also want to ask, do you believe that journaling your trading progress can actually help a trader to improve?.

For me journaling changed everything, but only when I stopped doing it by hand. Screenshots are a good start, the problem is you cannot measure anything with them. You will never see that you lose money after 2 losses in a row, or that your best setup is the one you take the least.

Excel template works and it is free, I can share mine if you want. The limit is you have to type everything manually, so most people stop after 3 weeks.

What changed it for me is connecting the exchange with API, so the trades come in automatically and I only add the context: tag, mistake, emotion in the trade. After a few months you start to see your own patterns, and that is where the progress is. The psychology part is the one nobody measures, and it is the one that costs the most.

Full disclosure, I am building a tool that does exactly this, so I am not neutral. But even a spreadsheet beats screenshots.

[Peanutswar]

For those who wanted to take their trading journey seriously its necessary because this could be your guide if ever to analyze your set up and also you need to change something into the strategy sometimes unexpected things happen to our trades, other getting loss with their path and make a wrong decisions with their position or even worst make a revenge trades without a proper plan or plot with the trade, just pure emotions so its a must to understand what will be the market next move.

Personally I do have a plan but im a swing trader so this tooks so many days or weeks before there is a changes happens in the market and also to analyze than into lower time frame of course its all depends on our availability what kind of trader are we.