Write the trade down before you take it.
A journal that keeps the plan you wrote beside the result you got, so you can see whether a losing week came from the market or from you.
Bring your history in from a CSV, or start with the next trade.
- Entry
- 182.40
- Stop
- 186.00
- Target
- 171.60
- Size
- 194
- Risk
- 1.4%
- R:R
- 1:3.0
This would be your 4th trade today. Your cap is 3.
One confirmation on this setup. You ask for two.
- Forex
- Crypto
- Futures
- Stocks
- Options
- Funds
Three things most journals leave out.
A list of fills tells you a month went badly. It cannot tell you what you were looking at when you took the trades, or which ones you saw and let go.
The plan, written first
Instrument, direction, entry, stop, target, size, and why you are taking it. All of it written down while the outcome is still unknown.
The setup you passed on
Every plan ends up taken, skipped with a reason, or expired. Skipped is the useful one: it is the only place a trade you talked yourself out of gets recorded.
You name everything
Strategies, setups, entry types, the levels you enter at, the mistakes you make. The app ships with none of these lists. You write them, so the tags still mean something when you filter by them a year later.
Eight stages, and the order matters.
Everything runs one way. You record something before you know how it turned out, the app measures the result against it, and that changes what you record next time. Skip a stage and the ones after it still work, with less to go on.
- 01Set upWhere every number gets its ground.
- 02Create your vocabularyName how you trade, in your own words.
- 03Organize the standardWrite the limits down so they can be checked.
- 04Use it before the entryDecide while you still don't know how it turns out.
- 05Track what happenedRecord the execution against the plan that predicted it.
- 06Review the periodSay why, while you still remember why.
- 07Learn what the record saysRead it all back. Nothing is added here.
- 08Improve the standardChange what you'll do next. Never what you did.
One number, and the six things underneath it.
- Expectancy
- 30
- Profit factor
- 20
- Edge margin
- 15
- Drawdown control
- 15
- Consistency
- 10
- Discipline
- 10
A component that can’t be measured is dropped instead of scored zero, so recording less never improves your number. Under 30 trades the score is marked provisional.
- Plans you didn’t take
- Straight back in after a loss
- Sizing up after losing
- Sizing down after a losing run
- Taking winners off early
- Days well past your usual
- Longest losing run
Each signal is measured against your own median, not a threshold out of a book. The dashboard covers your results. This covers your habits.
Raise your standard whenever you want. Your history stays where it is.
Rules and scores are stored on the trade as it stood the day you took it. Tightening your rulebook today will not rewrite last week into a clean run.