What a trading journal is for
A trading journal is the record of every trade you take: what you traded, why you took it, how you managed it and what it taught you. Your platform already keeps the fills. The journal adds the reasons and the context, which are the parts you can learn from.
Kept over weeks, it answers the questions memory gets wrong: which setups actually pay, at what time of day you trade worst, whether you follow your plan, and what your mistakes cost, in dollars and in R.
What to record on every trade
Keep each entry short enough to fill in right after the trade, while it’s still fresh:
- The facts: date and time (New York time), contract, side, size, entry, exit, stop and target.
- The result: net P&L after fees, and the result in R, the P&L divided by the risk to your stop.
- The reason: the setup, and whether the trade was in your plan.
- The context: the session you traded in and any economic release close to the trade. The market hours and the release dates pages give the times.
- The execution: did you respect your stop and your size, add to a loser, exit too early?
- Your state: one word for your emotion before the entry is enough.
- A screenshot of the chart, so you can see the trade again later.
The facts can come from your platform: a file import or an automatic sync saves the typing (see how to import your trades). The reason, the execution and your state can only come from you.
The numbers worth watching
- Win rate: the share of trades that made money. On its own it says little: a 40% win rate can pay if the winners are large enough.
- Average win and average loss, and the ratio between them.
- Expectancy: what a trade earns on average, in dollars or in R. A positive expectancy over a large sample is what an edge looks like.
- Profit factor: gross profits divided by gross losses.
- Drawdown: the largest drop from a peak, the first number a prop firm watches.
- Rule breaks: how many trades broke your plan, and what they cost.
Judge these numbers on dozens of trades, not a handful: on a small sample, one lucky day decides everything. The expectancy calculator shows how win rate, average win and average loss combine.
Screenshots and charts
A screenshot at entry shows what you saw when you decided; one at exit shows how the trade played out. Mark your entry, stop and target on it. In a review, the chart often explains a loss faster than any note.
If your journal shows each trade on a real chart of the contract, keep screenshots for the trades worth studying.
The review, daily and weekly
A journal you never reread is just a log. Two short reviews are enough: sixty seconds after the close (what went well, one thing to improve, did you follow your plan), and a weekly review on Friday that turns your costliest mistake of the week into one rule for the next.
The daily journal routine walks through both, step by step, with what to do if you miss a day.
On a prop firm account
A prop account adds a second set of numbers to your journal: the firm’s rules. Before each session, know the room left above your max loss, today’s loss limit, and where you stand on the profit target, the minimum days and the consistency rule. Firms use different drawdown types (end of day, intraday or static), so the same loss can cost more room at one firm than at another: see the drawdown rules compared.
Keep evaluations, funded and live accounts apart. Profit on an evaluation or a simulated funded account isn’t money you have: what you have is the payouts you received, minus your fees and resets. A journal that adds the two together tells a story that isn’t true.
Track payouts and expenses too. Evaluation fees, resets, activation fees and data fees are part of your result, and the payout conditions (winning days, balance to keep, caps) decide when you can get paid: see the payout rules compared.
If you copy trades to several accounts, count one decision once in your statistics. Otherwise five accounts turn every win and every mistake into five, and your sample looks bigger than it is.
Paper, spreadsheet or app
- Paper is free and makes you write slowly, which helps you think, but it computes nothing. The free templates are a good start.
- A spreadsheet computes your numbers but needs upkeep: formulas break, fees and partial exits are tedious, and prop firm rules are yours to rebuild.
- A journaling app imports your trades and computes the numbers for you. Check that its P&L matches your platform to the cent and that you can export everything. The best trading journals for prop firms are compared side by side, and Sweep has a free plan.
Common mistakes
- Journaling only the losing days: your winners have patterns too.
- Writing too much: one line per trade lasts, a page a day stops after a week.
- Judging trades by P&L alone: a loss that followed the plan is a good trade, a win that broke it is a warning.
- Changing several rules at once: change one, keep it for a week, then look at the numbers.
- Never rereading: without a review, the journal can’t change anything.
Start this week
Pick your tool, then log every trade for five sessions without skipping one, each with its result in R and whether it was in your plan. On Friday, read the week back and write down one rule for the next. That’s the method; the rest is repetition.
New to prop firms? The 90-day gameplan turns this method into daily missions, from your first micro to your first evaluation.