- Today I'm gonna share with you, with this nice logo at the back which I just noticed, some tips about trading journals.

Welcome traders, welcome back to Chiang Mai. I've been here for only a couple of hours but I kind of love this place so far. I got a question recently about kind of what you put in your trading journal, especially like a paper one, 'cause it's easy to make something online these days, and you can kind of keep track of your stats there, but I think there's more to it. There's more to becoming better, improving your stats, kind of making this book of your progress and things you've done and things you've achieved and what you've learned along the way.

So, I want to share with you some things that I would track, actually seven things that I track in my journal, whether in this one or other ones that I don't have with me right now. But you'll get to see what you can put in your journals. And those are only ideas so don't feel stressed or forced to use them, use what you like and what you think makes sense to you. And then just write it down in your journal and track it over time, okay?

So the very first thing, one of the first things I start to use in my journal, I start to track are the zones I look at, so I would take this kind of small notebook with me over the weeks, I would bring it with me every day, have it on my desk all the time. And I would note down inside of it the zones of the market I was looking at for that week. So, all the things I was expecting to trade and every single pair, and I would just write these down. And I would just keep track of this, this is very easy! 'Cause first of all you write it down so you tend to remember better, and then you can just keep track of it, see during the week, and you can also bring it with you. So like, the issue with your cellphone is that you kind of get too distracted, you kind of forget to look at it, or you get lost in other apps and stuff. But this, you can carry it with you, you can see it all the time, and it's much easier to remember the zones.

I found I had a much better clarity when I was writing down the zones in my notebook as opposed to trying to remember or just putting them in my chart and trying to remember after. So that's really useful!

So the first thing I would write down in my notebook is that at the beginning of every week, or even like every day if you want, write it down, to the zones you look at for that week or that day and then keep track of it! So look back at the other day, try to remember the zones. And if you wanna take a trade in the market, just check if it's in accordance to those zones. And if not, maybe skip the trade. That's what I do for myself, might be different for you but that's kind of how I look at things. And I also happen to write down my video ideas in that same notebook.

The second thing which I started doing pretty much just this year for my robots are the trading returns and other statistics I wanna track. So I have in this notebook over here my Algo statistics. Here we go, hope that's clear, for this year so far. So, in January of this year, the Algo made 2.94%, February lost 2.74%, that's always in here and I also have the more trades I took plus the win rate of that. And also things I corrected over time, so, for example, this past month I saw an error in the Algos, so I start to correct that, what are the results of this? Well, minus one percent because of a fault in the Algo so we corrected it, it's fine, we need to create a custom version that I wrote here. We did it, and so that's pretty good, we're doing awesome. So that's kind of a way to keep track of the things that you are finding out based on your stats. For me it's just the win rate and the percent I made last month, for you it could be different because the other parameters for me are quite fixed but you can track all the stats you want. And see if it improves over time, if it doesn't then they big have an issue, but if you don't write it down it's very hard to prove something, you have to really push yourself. 'Cause for me, I write down like every single month, steps or action steps I want to take for the next month. And if I don't do them, well it's only my fault, it's only me, it's not because of anything else. So the more you do this, the more you keep track of things that you gotta work on, and that I just found makes it very easy to kind of improve and get better with time. And if you have a really bad month or a really good month, maybe note down next to your month, or below, write down why, what happened, was it because you didn't have any setup or because you didn't make mistakes, or maybe you took all of your trade properly that month. Write this down, and that's gonna keep you accountable and tell you what to do next month to get the same results. 'Cause that's really awesome, really useful here. And that's the second thing.

The third thing, which I wrote down in my notebooks earlier was about my strategies. So, I would write down, kind of the strategies trades, kind of my playbook in that notebook. I will have a page per strategy with all the rules, everything I look for, the kind of setup I look for with the setup I drew in the notebook. And I would kind of like that because I would be able to keep track of my strategies with things that I have tried, with things that didn't work, what strategies were the best, and that's just awesome, that's just a cool way to do it. So, write down your strategies there, try to see if they improve over time too, and if you wanna change them perhaps, just keep a log of things you've tried and strategies you've used and that just makes it nice. 'Cause then it's also easier to kind of get other ideas now based on your strategies in the past if you go back a few months later. So for me my strategies didn't change that much in the past year and a half since that I write down for the first time, but it's so, like you could write it out every year or have a notebook to carry with you with your training plan if you want in it, that's fine too. I prefer to have like a template, on the side but you go with what you prefer of course. 'Cause that could be a good idea.

The fourth thing to write down is of course the things you learned. So often we hear, if you're on podcast, in a video, like advice, something we have to implement. Maybe it's gonna be this, these points that you should write down in your notebook, these ideas. But we forget to write them down sometimes, so we kind of forget them over time, and that's the big issue 'cause you could learn and you could hear from the best trader in the world, get all these amazing advice, all these amazing things you've learned in one afternoon, but then you don't write them down, and two weeks after you forget everything. Maybe there's gonna be one or two things that stick, but the other ones, you forget them because you didn't write anything down. And so you wanna be able to keep track of this, keep track of the things you learned in your journal and write them down. Could be things about trading, about life, about anything else that you write down in your journal and keep track of, okay, that's a very good thing to do, and very rewarding with time 'cause you can go back and review what you've learned, review your experiences, review the things that you've heard and use it later on in the future. Back in Canada, I have this library of notebooks which are notebooks like this over the past years and they're just useful, I can go back to them, see what I have learned these past years and just take action on that or use the advice I heard, maybe three years ago in a conversation with a trader and use this today to improve, so why not? Why push this advice away when you can kind of keep it, use it, and put it in a notebook to use later. So I kind of think this is pretty cool in my opinion. Okay, that's the fourth thing.

The fifth thing, which I've done a lot are writing down the challenges that I face in trading. Okay, this is big because when you write down a challenge or something you face, something you wanna solve on a paper or better, on a notebook, you tend to kind of, for some reason come up with solutions on how to solve it, how to fix the issue, and many problems that I had would just kind of, maybe at night, or maybe whatever I would write down the problem I faced with a question mark, 'how can I' blank, 'how can I miss these trades', whatever. This is something I would of done in the past. Then below that you wanna write down some solutions, some possible solutions which most of them are gonna be crap, we already know that, that's fine. But some are gonna be good, okay, so I wrote down below this 'oh I could set alerts on my chart', or I could, maybe I could be more diligent with my chart time. Or maybe I could have a device with me all the time to look at the chart, alert me of trades. Or maybe I could code some things, not miss trades. So you write down all the ideas you have, write down when you write the question and maybe the next day you can come up and you wake up with another idea that you wanna write down, write it down again and you just create this basis of ideas and then you find the best one which is gonna come up inevitably at some point and use it! Okay, and that could solve your problem very easily. But the thing is, if we only have our problems in our mind and not on paper, it's very difficult to improve and to find solutions. It's better when you write down everything on a paper or somewhere to kind of keep track of it and brainstorm on that idea. So I find this to be very useful, could be good for you, could be not that good, but try it out and see if it works. Okay, that's an awesome thing for me, so that's number five.

Number six is writing down your future implementation goals, the things that you wanna implement. It could be your goals in general, it could be your goals that you got from the past month, things you wanna kind of master next month, that you're gonna track next month, whatever you prefer. So for me I kind of have this big section in this notebook right here of my goals for the year and things that happened last year as well. So those are things that I kind of like to track, and that I like to have at a front page of my notebook to be able to look at often. Okay that's pretty awesome, I write down things that I wanna make happen, some successes I've had the past year. That's just a cool way to see how far you've come. You could do the same thing, so for me implementation goals are things that I write down next to my stats every month. Okay, 'cause those are things that I wanna improve. Those are kind of action steps for next month. This is what I mean by implementation goals, okay, so it's things you wanna get done in the next month. And that's just a cool way to keep track of things, and that means that you won't forget what you have to work on and then the next month when you write down your stats again you'll be accountable to what you wrote the past month which is very powerful. So, good idea here, write down your goals or things you want to implement and that's going to make it easier for you to keep track of it over time.

And finally, the seventh thing or idea you can write down in your notebook are your key rituals. This is for me two things, so, one of the rituals right now like kind of keep my momentum. Okay, I have this right here which are biggest momentum killer at the top of this page, okay? Which you can see, but doesn't matter. And then I also wanna write down on either my notebook or my cellphone, whichever is the best for you. I kinda like the notebook a lot. Basically, things that help you stay on track. So your rituals, what can help you achieve your goals. What you have to get done every week or every day to get to your goals, okay? If you can figure out those and write them down in a notebook, then you are less likely to miss them. And more actually to kind of stick to them and remember them over time, 'cause what happens is that we can have really good ideas for the year of things we're gonna do, habits we're gonna have, but fast forward two, three months, or even six months, we forget those because we are too busy with other things that we heard not that long ago. So if you write them down in your notebook, then you know what to work on, you know what to apply, and you know that these are the things you've set at the beginning of the year that made sense to you. You might change them of course, but you wanna keep track of your habits and things that you know to get you results. And that's just a cool way to put it in your notebook, follow them, use them, and do what you are supposed to do and not do what you're not supposed to do, basically. So that's pretty awesome.

Those are the seven things guys that made a lot of sense to me in my notebook, seven ideas for you. Use them if you want, use some of them if you want, use all of them if you want, up to you, you decide. But comment below with your thoughts if you have any other ideas of things you can write down in your notebook as a trader.

Comment below if you wanna know for sure. And subscribe if you haven't done yet. Here are the comments from the past video, I appreciate you guys always leaving in the comments down below in the section, And I'll catch you guys back here for another video in Chiang Mai tomorrow, ciao.