Trading Journal: What to Record, a Free Template and a Review Routine

A trading journal is a record of every trade you take. It holds the plan you wrote before entry (setup, entry, stop loss, position size, risk), the result after you exit, and short notes on your decisions and mood. If you review it every week, it shows which setups make you money, which habits lose it, and whether your strategy has an edge at all.

Without a journal, you grade yourself from memory. Memory keeps the big wins and blurs the rules you broke. A journal turns a vague 'bad week' into a specific line such as 'three of my losses came from moving my stop'. That is a mistake you can stop repeating, and you can't rewrite a note you made at entry.

What to write in each trade: a template you can copy

First, one term. R is the amount of money you risk on one trade: the loss you take if your stop loss is hit. If you risk $50, then 1R = $50. A $100 win is +2R and a full stop-out is −1R. Logging results in R lets you compare trades of different sizes fairly. A trade's result divided by 1R is its R-multiple.

Copy these fields into a notebook or spreadsheet. Fill in the 'Before' rows before you open the trade and the 'After' rows once you close it.

To set up a spreadsheet, copy this header row in one go and split it into columns at the | sign:

Date | Session | Pair | Direction | Setup tag | Entry | Stop | Target | Stop pips | Lots | Risk $ | Reason | Condition | Mood | Equity | Exit | Result $ | Result R | Plan followed | Tag | Screenshot

You only need two formulas:

• Result R = Result $ ÷ Risk $
• Expectancy = average of the Result R column

Use fixed tag lists for setups and mistakes. You can't sort free text like 'kind of a breakout' later. You can sort the same five or six tags, even after hundreds of trades.

The picture below shows one entry filled in with illustrative numbers. It's a buy at 1.1000 with a 25-pip stop and 0.20 lots. On EUR/USD one pip is worth about $10 per standard lot, so the risk is 25 × $10 × 0.20 = $50.

One trading journal entry filled in before and after the trade

Write the plan before you click buy or sell

The 'Before' half of the template is a filter, not paperwork. If you can't fill in the stop loss, the size and a one-sentence reason, you don't have a trade yet. You have an urge.

Go through this check before every trade:

• The setup matches one of your named setups
• The stop loss price is set and its distance in pips is written down
• The position size is calculated so that a stop-out costs exactly 1R
• The target or exit rule is written down
• The reason fits in one sentence
• Your mood score is 3 or higher

Decision rule: if any line is empty, or your mood is 1 or 2, don't place the trade. Write 'skipped' and the reason instead. Those skipped-trade notes often turn out to be the most useful lines in the journal.

The comparison below shows the same urge to trade written two ways. The vague line can't teach you anything. The checked line stops the trade and leaves a note you can review later.

Before vs after: the same urge to trade written as a vague line and as a checked journal line

Vague journal line

• –EUR/USD, wanted to buy
• –No stop or size written
• –Bought anyway, lost
• –Note: bad day

Line written with the check

• –EUR/USD buy, pullback tag
• –Stop 1.0975 (25 pips), 0.20 lots = 1R
• –Mood 2 of 5: below the minimum
• –Skipped, reason written

On days you don't trade, write a short daily entry: what you expected from the market and why you stayed out. It keeps the habit going. Later, it also shows whether staying out was good judgment.

Grade the decision, not the result

The most common misread of a journal is judging each trade by its profit. A trade that followed every rule and lost is a good trade. A trade that broke the rules and won is a bad one, because the habit behind it will cost you later. The grid below shows all four cases.

Trade grading grid: plan followed versus win or loss

Here's how to spot this in your own notes. Filter the journal for trades marked 'No' under 'Plan followed?' that ended as wins. If your notes on those trades call them clever, you're training the habit that will hurt you.

Record the good grades too. A journal that lists only failures wears down your confidence. Noting where you followed the plan, especially on losing trades, keeps the record honest in both directions.

Turn the journal into numbers: R-multiples and expectancy

R-multiples don't have to be whole numbers. Risk $50 and lose $25 after an early exit: that's −0.5R.

The levels below show the same example trade from the template. The stop sits 25 pips under the entry, which is 1R. The target sits 50 pips above it, which is 2R.

R-multiples on the example trade: entry 1.1000, stop 1.0975 at −1R, target 1.1050 at +2RIllustration

Expectancy is your average R-multiple over many trades. It's what you make, on average, per trade for each unit of risk. Positive expectancy means the strategy made money over your sample. Negative means it lost.

Here is an illustrative example: 10 trades, each risking $50, with 4 winners of +2R and 6 losers of −1R.

Expectancy from 10 illustrative trades risking $50 each

Total won4 × 2R= 8R

Total lost6 × 1R= 6R

Net result8R − 6R= 2R

Expectancy per trade2R ÷ 10= 0.2R

In money0.2 × $50= $10

Expectancy+0.2R, about $10 per trade

So over this sample, each trade earned 0.2R, or $10, on average. Notice that the strategy made money while losing more trades than it won, because the winners were twice the size of the losers.

But ten trades are far too few to trust. A common rule of thumb, and one you can set for yourself, is to read nothing into expectancy before about 30 trades, and to wait for 100 to 200 logged trades before you trust the picture.

Decision rule: below 30 trades on a setup, don't change it. Keep the risk small and keep logging. From 30 trades on, check expectancy for each setup every month. If a setup is still negative after 100 or more trades taken by the rules, rework it or drop it.

Plot your balance after each closed trade and you get an equity curve: your account value over time. Match the dips in the curve to your journal dates to see which trades and which weeks pulled it down.

Keep an error log and price every mistake

An error log is the list of trades you graded 'Bad', each with its mistake tag and its cost in R. Add up the cost of each tag to see which habit is most expensive. It's usually not the one you would guess.

The chart below shows an illustrative month. Moving the stop loss cost 4R, revenge trades after a loss cost 3R, and trades taken without a written plan cost 2R. That's 9R, or $450 at $50 per R. Early exits didn't lose money, but they left 1.5R of profit on the table.

Illustrative error log: one month of mistakes priced in RIllustration

Moved stop loss

−4R

Revenge trade

−3R

No written plan

−2R

Early exit

1.5R missed

Fix the biggest bar first, with one specific rule. For example, if 'moved stop' tops the log, set the stop with the order and don't touch it until the trade closes. One new rule per week is enough. Five new rules at once rarely stick.

A weekly and monthly review routine

Writing entries without reading them back is the main reason journals stop helping. Block out time for the review the same way you block out time for a trading session.

Weekly review:

1. Fill in any missing 'After' fields and screenshots.
2. Count how many trades followed the plan, out of the total.
3. Add up R for each setup tag.
4. Add up R for each mistake tag.
5. Write one rule for next week at the top of the journal.

Monthly review:

1. Work out expectancy for each setup, with its trade count beside it.
2. Update the equity curve.
3. Find the largest drawdown: the biggest drop from a peak balance to the next low, in money and as a percentage. In an illustrative case, a balance that peaks at $5,000 and falls to $4,600 has a drawdown of $400. As a percentage, that's $400 ÷ $5,000 = 8%.
4. Compare mood scores with results. Once you have at least 30 trades in each mood group, check them: if trades taken at a mood of 3 lose more R than those taken at 4 or 5, raise your minimum mood score to 4.
5. Compare with last month's numbers, not with your best month.

Equity curve with the largest drawdown from a $5,000 peak to a $4,600 lowIllustration

Notebook, spreadsheet or trading journal app

Any format works if you use it every time and it holds every field in the template above. Keeping it every day matters far more than whether it's handwritten or digital.

Unless you already like an app, start with the template above in a spreadsheet. If you do use an app, export your data on a regular schedule. A free service can change its price, drop features or shut down, and your trade history is too valuable to keep in only one place.

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