Updates: Week Ending September 5, 2025

This post will be a bit different. I don’t have any trades, wins, or losses to share for the past week. Past few weeks, in fact. This is because I’ve been experimenting with a new approach to optimize my journaling process.

I have a Tradingview Premium subscription, and I 100% think it’s worth it. The Premium subscription removes the annoying pop-up ads, gives you more alerts, and more freedom to customize chart views.
 

In addition, Tradingview itself has a key advantage over all other major platforms out there, especially in the FX space. This advantage lies within its annotation capabilities.

While platforms such as MetaTrader, cTrader, and broker-specific solutions may be capable of doing chart notes, they’re not nearly as robust as Tradingview.

This feature made me come to a realization - why journal trades and log them in a separate Excel file when I can comment directly on my active charts? The issue with journaling my trades in a separate Excel file is that this exercise becomes more data entry rather than deep thought.

I’m “rushing” to input all of the details in my Excel file, but I’m not fully thinking through all the reasons why I’m actually interested in entering the trade.

When I make commentary directly on the chart, I’m pinpointing specific moments that call for my attention. In turn, this helps me make better entry, exit, and trade management decisions.

Here's an example below.

CADCHF

I was watching the CADCHF pair last week. If I determine that a currency pair is worth me actively monitoring, I’ll set up a dedicated split window for it.

In the left window, I have the daily timeframe. This reminds me of the overall trend direction along with the key daily levels that may impact the trade.

On the right window, I have an intra-day timeframe. This can either be the 1-hour or 4-hour timeframe. It really depends on how much noise is in the price action. If there’s more noise like in this CADCHF example, then I’ll use the 4-hour chart to plot key levels to identify trend confluence.

On the chart itself, I’ll annotate directly on the candles to note the behavior, what it means, and how my trade will be structured.

I’ll use Tradingview’s screenshot tool to easily save the chart and annotations with one keyboard shortcut. The image file will go directly into my downloads folder. As the trade and/or price action of the currency pairs I’m watching progresses, I’ll save additional screenshots with updated annotations.

The screenshot files allow me to revisit my analysis at a later time. However, the annotations on my chart serve as a continuous reminder to inform my trading decisions.