By Nummius · October 18, 2026
Most traders know they should keep a trading journal. Far fewer keep one that actually changes how they trade. The difference is rarely willpower. It is usually what gets written down and, more importantly, whether anyone ever reads it back. This guide covers what to record, when to record it, how to review it, and a trading journal template you can copy into a spreadsheet today.
What a trading journal is for
A trading journal is a record of decisions, not just results. Your broker statement already tells you what you bought, what you sold and what you made or lost. What it cannot tell you is why you took the trade, what you planned to do, and whether you actually did it. That gap is where most of the improvement lives.
A useful journal answers three questions:
- Did I follow my plan? This is about process.
- Was the plan any good? This is about edge.
- What keeps going wrong, and why? This is about habits.
If your journal only answers “how much did I make this week”, it is a P&L report. Useful, but not a journal.
What to record: before, during and after the trade
The best moment to start a journal entry is before you click. A plan written before entry cannot be quietly rewritten by hindsight, and the simple act of writing it filters out a surprising number of impulsive trades.
Before the trade: the plan
- Instrument and direction (long or short)
- Setup name from your playbook, for example “opening range breakout” or “pullback to the 20 EMA”
- Planned entry, stop and target prices
- Position size and the dollar amount at risk (our position size guide shows the formula)
- Why now: one or two sentences on the reason for the trade
- Market context: trend, sector strength, scheduled news or earnings
During the trade
- Actual entry and exit prices and times
- Any change to the stop or the target, and the reason for it
- Your emotional state in a word or two: calm, rushed, bored, frustrated
After the trade: the review
- Result in dollars and in R, the multiple of your initial risk (see risk-reward ratio and R-multiples)
- Did you follow the plan? Yes, partly, or no
- What went well and what you would do differently next time
- A screenshot of the chart at entry and at exit
A trading journal template you can copy
Here is a minimal template. Each row is one trade. Copy the column names into Google Sheets or Excel and you have a working journal in five minutes.
| Column | What to enter | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Date | Trade date | 2026-10-14 |
| Symbol | Ticker or contract | AAPL |
| Side | Long or short | Long |
| Setup | Name from your playbook | Pullback to 20 EMA |
| Planned entry / stop / target | Prices written before entry | 182.40 / 180.90 / 185.40 |
| Size | Shares or contracts | 66 |
| Risk ($) | (entry − stop) × size × point value | 99 |
| Actual entry / exit | Your fills | 182.45 / 185.10 |
| Result ($) | Net of commissions | +172 |
| Result (R) | Result ÷ risk | +1.7R |
| Followed plan? | Yes / partly / no | Yes |
| Mistake tag | One tag, or none | None |
| Emotion | One word | Calm |
| Lesson | What you learned | Waited for the close above VWAP |
Two columns do most of the work: Followed plan? and Mistake tag. Together they turn a list of trades into data about your behavior. Keep the mistake tags to a short, fixed list so they can be counted: moved stop, early exit, chased entry, oversized, no setup, traded the news.
For a futures trading journal, add the contract month and the point value (for example $50 per point on ES, $5 on MES), because your dollar risk depends on it. Everything else stays the same.
The metrics worth tracking
After 20 or 30 trades a few numbers start to mean something. After a hundred they mean a lot more. The ones worth watching:
- Win rate: winning trades divided by total trades. Meaningless on its own: a 35% win rate can be very profitable if the winners are large.
- Average win and average loss, ideally measured in R so that trades of different sizes are comparable.
- Profit factor: gross profit divided by gross loss. Above 1.0 means the sample made money.
- Expectancy: (win rate × average win) − (loss rate × average loss). It is what you expect to make per trade, on average, over many trades.
- Plan adherence: the share of trades where you followed the plan. Then compare the results of followed-plan trades with the rest. For many traders this one comparison is the most convincing thing a journal ever shows them.
- Results by setup, time of day and day of week. A setup that only works in the first hour is still a good setup, as long as you only trade it in the first hour.
How to review: a weekly routine
Recording without reviewing is the most common way trading journals fail. A routine that takes about 30 minutes a week:
- Daily, five minutes: fill in the after-trade fields while you still remember what happened. Tag mistakes honestly.
- Weekly: sort the week’s trades by mistake tag and count them. Pick the tag that cost the most, in dollars or in R.
- Ask why, five times. “I moved my stop.” Why? “Price was near the stop and I didn’t want to take the loss.” Why? Keep going until you reach something you can change, such as a rule, a routine or your size, rather than “be more disciplined”.
- Write one rule for next week. One, not five. For example: “Once a stop is placed, I only move it in the direction of the trade.”
- Check last week’s rule. Did you follow it? Did it help? Keep it, change it or drop it.
This is slow, and it is meant to be. Habits change one at a time.
Spreadsheet or trading journal software?
A spreadsheet is free, flexible and good enough to start with. Its weaknesses show up after a few months: manual data entry, screenshots stored somewhere else, formulas that break, and reviews that get skipped because they take too long.
Dedicated trading journal software records or imports trades, calculates the metrics automatically and keeps the chart, the plan and the notes together with each trade. Whichever you choose, look for four things: the plan is captured before entry, mistakes can be tagged, results can be filtered by setup, and reviewing is quick enough that you actually do it.
How Nummius approaches the trading journal
We built the Nummius trading journal around the plan-before-you-click idea. A pre-trade plan pops up before entry, and afterwards you can compare plan versus execution and reconcile your trades against a CSV from your broker. Plutus, the built-in AI coach, runs a 5 Whys root-cause review on a bad day and sets one daily focus until the habit sticks. It works for both stocks and futures.
The free Duelist plan includes pre-trade planning, unlimited post-trade review and playbook criteria. The full journal analytics, including P&L, win rate, profit factor and the calendar view, are part of Core, which has a 14-day free trial. The details are on the pricing page.
Common trading journal mistakes
- Only journaling losing trades. Winners carry lessons too, especially the lucky ones that broke your rules and paid anyway.
- Writing the plan after the trade. It will always look like you planned exactly what happened.
- Too many fields. If an entry takes 15 minutes, you will stop doing it. Start with the template above and add fields only when you need them.
- Vague notes. “Bad trade” teaches nothing. “Entered before the candle closed” does.
- Never reviewing. A journal nobody reads is just a diary.
Key takeaways
- Write the plan before entry, then record the execution, then review honestly.
- Measure results in R, tag mistakes from a short fixed list, and compare followed-plan trades with the rest.
- Review weekly, find the most expensive habit, and change one rule at a time.
If you want to test a setup before journaling it live, our guide on how to backtest a trading strategy walks through the process step by step.
This article is for educational purposes only and is not financial advice. Trading involves risk, including the loss of principal. All trade examples are illustrative, not recommendations.
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