How Trader Journal Helps You to Improve Your Trading. Part 2
In the first part of this article, I explained why keeping a journal is maybe the only way to a stable income in trading. If you haven't read it yet, I highly recommend starting with this one. And here I will try to show you how to keep a journal as efficiently as possible, spending the minimum amount of time. The rest of the time you will spend drinking a cocktail on a white beach, spending the dollars you earned and remembering how you started your way in trading. 😎
How to start to keep journal
Laziness is the engine of progress. 📌 And it was laziness that gave rise to our trader's journal. Why fill in manually what a computer can do? It is enough to add an API key and the journal will show all your transactions at once.
The first step is to add an API key (read only!) to the site. This can be done on the page "My API keys". After successfully adding the key, all your futures trades will appear in the "My trades" section.
Filling in transactions
As we remember from the first part, every trade must have a reason to enter. This is one of the most important parts that I highly discourage beginners from skipping. When you enter a trade, it appears in the journal, and you immediately add the reason for entering. This will greatly help you avoid unnecessary trades and find working setups that are profitable, eliminating the reasons for entering, for which you regularly lose.
✔️ Have you noticed something unusual or want to highlight something special for the future? Write it down in the transaction description. Here you can add nuances or describe in more detail how the transaction proceeds. Did the price move in your direction, or did a pullback start immediately? A major player has appeared? Alternatively, you can write down the value of your secret indicator. That would then compare with the result of the transaction and make a conclusion.
✔️ The deal is closed. The profit (or loss) is fixed. It is important to record the output. Did the login reasons work. Whether the stop loss was there and whether you exceeded the risk management. Anything to do is important at first. This is how trading strategies are created that work!
Day and week analysis
It is important to look at the picture as a whole, the "Journal" section is suitable for this.
In this section, you can analyze your trading week and day. After trading, you can open the analysis of the current day and see all your actions for one coin on one chart.
✔️ Such a global view helps to see where you did not sit in the deal and where you did. Note what led to this. And write down a note for this day. You can also write down your psychological state. Didn't get enough sleep? Woke up broken or sat down at the terminal tired? Write it down. Our psychological state directly affects the way we trade.
At the end of the week, you will look at your bottom line, read the notes for each day, and be able to take steps to improve your trading. It won't take you more than 10 minutes a day, and the result will definitely be reflected in your balance next week!
❗️ Remember to reread your notes regularly. Refresh in your memory the experience you have gained.
Creating your own widget board
As soon as you accumulate at least a small history of your trading, the magic of statistics will open to you. We have wrapped dry numbers and complex formulas in easy-to-understand "widgets" that you can add in one click (we've described how to use the "summary" page in this article).
We are preparing a complete overview of all the widgets available on the site, but here I will only share a small set that will definitely help you at first.
1️⃣ The first widget that you should definitely add is "Profit for login reasons". Here you will immediately see what reason for entering is not profitable. This does not mean that you urgently need to give it up. Rather, you need to understand what you are doing wrong.
For example, a "breakout of the level" constantly ends with a stop loss. Perhaps your entry point is too late. Or the stop loss is always in the "collecting liquidity" zone before the breakout. And it is enough to start entering where you previously placed your stop loss.
2️⃣ Another important widget is "Coin loss distribution". Traders tend to get attached to one coin. If you see that the lion's share of your losses on a coin, for example, Ripple, it may be worth temporarily abandoning it and moving on to other coins.
3️⃣ "Calendar" is a widget that everyone has initially. An essential widget for beginners to spot patterns. For example, on Saturday you have regular losses, the market changes, the glass is empty, bots start to swing the price in different directions. This is a reason to move to the older Time Frame and refuse scalp transactions.
Combining different widgets will allow you to find the perfect setup in which you always remain in the black. Even if for this you only have to trade on Monday at the opening of America and only one coin. And the rest of the time, enjoy life without fear of missing another try. ☕️
Setting up risk management
Why the risk management is important for successful trading and how to set it up on the site, we've told in this article.
How long does it take to keep a journal?
Manually? Eternity (I tried and threw 3 times) in Trader Make Money, it takes no more than 5% of the time of your trading session. And the result can be hundreds and thousands of dollars earned in the end.
Investing time in a journal is an investment in a successful future in a profession where only a small percentage of people are successful. But the same small percentage keep at least some kind of accounting and analysis of their transactions.
Coincidence? 😉