A trade journal fails when it asks for more than you will fill in on a bad day. Five columns are enough to learn what you need, and a spreadsheet can hold them.
The five columns
- Setup name. One or two words for the kind of trade it was. You need this to compare like with like.
- Planned risk in dollars. What you would lose at the stop, written before the trade.
- Result in R. The profit or loss divided by the planned risk. A $150 gain on $100 of risk is +1.5R. A full stop-out is −1R.
- In the plan? Yes or no. Was this trade on your list, at your size, before you took it?
- Exit reason. Target, stop, time, or "changed my mind".
Why R and not dollars
Dollars mix up two things: how good the trade was and how big it was. A $300 win on a large position and a $300 win on a small one are different trades. In R, every trade is measured against what it risked, so results of different sizes can be added up and compared.
The number to watch is the average R per trade for each setup. Above zero over fifty or more trades, the setup is paying. Below zero, it is not, whatever the win rate says.
The comparison that matters
Sort the trades by the yes/no column and total each group separately.
average R of unplanned trades
Many traders find the planned trades are profitable and the unplanned ones give it back. If that is your result, the strategy does not need changing. The work is to take fewer unplanned trades.
On a bad day
When a session goes wrong and there are ten trades you do not want to write up, record one line instead: the date, the net result in R, the number of trades, and the time of the first trade that broke a rule. That line is the useful data from the day, and it takes a minute.
Start with: setup, planned risk, result in R, in the plan (yes or no), exit reason. Review by comparing the yes rows with the no rows.