Going Old School

The best way to journal is using an Excel spreadsheet. To preserve the longevity of your journaling, only document what is necessary. This post comes after a frustrating experience of trying to find the most optimal trade journaling software/service that integrates nicely with my broker, CMC Markets.

In my previous posts, I've talked about using EdgeWonk to document my trades. It has done a great job for the most part. I recently decided to look for a new service due to a few factors. 

These include:

• EdgeWonk is ceased support for my EdgeWonk 2 standalone software as they moved to a cloud platform.
  
  
• EdgeWonk 2, the standalone software, runs on java and I often have licensing issues when I set up a new portfolio for each year's performance tracking. This puts long-term use at risk.
  
  
• I had hopes to make my journaling process less manual after each trade.

After searching and previewing all the major journaling services that support FX, TraderSync came closest to being the perfect solution. It offered a clean interface with setup tagging capabilities. Most importantly, it enabled me to upload CSV files exported from my broker. 

Theoretically, this should enable me to spend more time tagging and reviewing setups and less on manually entering all parameters associated with each trade. In reality, the platform ended up being more trouble than it's worth. It would constantly fail to link open and close positions together and report inaccurate P&L figures. 

For the past little while, I have been second guessing the accuracy of the reported stats and P&L figures. I had a new problem - rather than manually entering every single trade, I manually validated every single trade from the CSV export because I couldn't trust the platform to import correctly and accurately.

In conclusion, I've decided to go old school and use an Excel sheet. Due to TraderSync's policy, my subscription is non-refundable. I'll consider it sunk cost because I'm tired of going back and forth with their support team so their developers can try to roll out fixes that don't work. Why advertise support for my broker when that's not true?

Here's how I journal now. Rather than burdening myself by tracking every single trade detail possible, I'm keeping things simple. I'm only recording the necessary stats that offer me immediate reflection. If you'd like to copy the journal format, here it is below.

Sample Trade Journal Template

I like to think that each column I've set up has a purpose. Here's why I track these parameters:

• DATE/TIME: Sort and filter trades (e.g., filter P&L by specific month or time range)
  
  
• TRADE TYPE (BUY/SELL): Track long vs short side performance
  
  
• PRODUCT: Track performance by currency pair and asset class
  
  
• UNITS/AMT: Track scaling progression and possibility of negotiating high volume brokerage rebates
  
  
• ENTRY PRICE: Used in conjunction with EXIT PRICE to calculate efficiency of capturing price movements
  
  
• EXIT PRICE: Used in conjunction with ENTRY PRICE to calculate efficiency of capturing price movements
  
  
• PROFIT/LOSS: Track trade performance and scaling progression
  
  
• ACCOUNT/BALANCE: Used in conjunction with PROFIT/LOSS to derive impact of unavoidable trading costs such as commissions, holding costs, and rebates
  
  
• SETUP TYPE: To reflect on the most effective setups
  
  
• MISTAKE TYPE: Document the mistakes that are most likely to occur and make a conscious effort to avoid them
  
  
• STOP LOSS HIT?: Determine if stop loss placement methodology is sub-optimal
  
  
• TAKE PROFIT HIT? Determine if take profit placement methodology is sub-optimal

I believe the list above captures the essential details. Tracking more than this will only produce marginal benefits versus the additional effort put in. That, of course, is assuming that the manual journaling procedure doesn't get abandoned due to the high effort it takes to document each trade.