Journaling is the practice of writing down your thoughts, feelings, and experiences in a journal. It’s a way to reflect, express yourself and keep track of your progress. I’ll be sharing with you some tips on the importance of journaling.
WHY IS JOURNALING IMPORTANT AS A TRADER
1. EMOTIONAL EASE
As humans we have emotions and it applies to every aspect of our lives, how we react to certain situations and what we do in response to these situations. Same thing applies to forex trading. As a trader we all certainly feel some type of way before taking a trade, how we react during the trade and even after closing a trade either in profit or loss. Journaling your thoughts and feelings can provide a healthy outlet of your emotions and help you process them.
2. SELF ANALYSIS
This is one major importance of journaling as it gives you an elaborate insight into yourself and the type of trader you are in essence. By journaling you can pin point your priorities when it comes to trading. Things like your risk appetite , pairs you like to trade, sessions that you are more productive with, how you manage losing streaks, whether you’re a scalper, day trader or swing trader.
3. PROBLEM SOLVING
Since the act of journaling is to track one’s experiences and habits, it brings about lucrative ways to which you can solve your problems too. The easiest way to identify any problem is by analyzing it and brainstorming to find possible solutions. As traders when we take out time to write down our pros and cons we tend to discover some of the things we maybe doing wrong, a few common ones like doubting your analysis, FOMO, tight stop losses and lot more. You realize that when you begin to journal your trade ,you can identify these problems and come up with creative ideas on how to minimize them.
4. MEMORY PRESERVATION
Another importance of journaling helps one preserve important track record of past and future performances on your trading journey, which you can always make reference to when need be.
Now having shared why journaling is important, it is also very important to know how to journal your trades. Bear in mind that there is no hard and fast rule on how to journal. You can always tweak it to suit your style of trading.
Create an Excel Sheet with your name on it. Title it ” My Performance Tracker. Arrange the data below in each column horizontally
1.Date
2.Pair
3.Position
4.Entry Type
5.Result
6.Profit/Loss
7.Note
You can as well use the guide on Notion to create a trading journal. Whenever you take any trade, you come under each column and write out details of the trade. On the column for note, you can include how you were able to handle your emotions during and after the trade. Another important thing to add to your journaling is screenshots of your trades before and after you take them. Set a time on weekends to review all your trades. Also take out time to get the latest information on the markets. Keep up with news events and track their performances too.
IN CONCLUSION
Journaling is extremely crucial for traders. It promotes emotional well-being, It also allows traders to conduct self-analysis, which enables them understand their preferences, strengths, and flaws. Journaling helps in problem-solving by identifying and addressing obstacles, resulting in creative solutions. Finally, it is a useful tool for memory preservation, allowing traders to track their performance and learn from previous experiences.
