Journaling Your Trades
As mentioned earlier, I used to write a blog post about my trades and document my thoughts for each and every trade in the Bear Bull Traders forums (https://forums.bearbulltraders.com
). Commencing in the summer of 2016, I would then upload a recap summary to YouTube. Although I have somewhat changed my practice, members of our community continue to make regular contributions to our YouTube channel. This blog helped me to maintain a good record of all of my trades, and also helped the members of our trading community (and others of course) to learn more by reading about my experiences.
Early in 2020, I decided to stop journaling as regularly as I used to in YouTube and writing my blog manually and instead use online services. The majority of traders in our community are also now using online services such as Tradervue (
www.tradervue.com
) or Chartlog (
www.Chartlog.com
). These online programs connect to your trading platform and extract all of the relevant information for you automatically and provide you with vital information about your trading. Regardless if you are trading live or practicing in a simulator, journaling must be a part of your trading journey. The end result and analysis derived from these online programs is amazing (as is the information you can glean from a more traditional journaling approach). This information can include:
- Your biggest loss
- Your biggest win
- Your ratio of losers to winners
- The commissions you are paying out
- The best time of the day for your trading
- The worst time of the day for your trading
- The average hold time for your trades
Learning the “facts” about your trading that I have listed above, and this is only a partial list, is extremely important in developing your trading skills.
As I noted earlier, I use a free software called Screenshot Captor
(or sometimes Lightshot
) to take a screenshot from my platform in real time right after I end a trade. I can see my entries and exits on the chart and I just add my thought process to the journal along with anything else I think I should note from that trading day. I often use these screenshots or videos for educational purposes such as our community’s weekly Wednesday workshops as well as for updating our live and recorded course materials.
Often traders in our community will discuss my trades with me and I will learn something from them. You can never be too experienced to learn from someone else! Sometimes I edit videos of my daily trades and post them on my YouTube channel. I keep a library of all of my trading videos and cut and edit them for a trading course that I am currently preparing.