How to Keep a Trading Journal (+ Free Tool)

Ask any consistently profitable trader what separates winners from losers, and the answer almost always comes back to discipline and self-awareness. A trading journal is the tool that builds both.

Yet most traders skip it. They think journaling is extra work with no payoff. The opposite is true — a trading journal is the single highest-ROI activity you can do outside of actual trading.

Why You Need a Trading Journal

1. It Reveals Your Real Edge (or Lack of One)

Without data, you're guessing. You think your scalping setups work, but do they? A journal turns gut feelings into measurable stats:

• Win rate — Are you actually winning more than you're losing?
• Average R:R — Are your winners bigger than your losers?
• Profit factor — For every dollar you lose, how much do you make?

These three numbers tell you whether your strategy has a real edge or you've been getting lucky.

2. It Exposes Your Leaks

Most traders don't lose because their strategy is bad — they lose because of execution errors. A journal helps you spot patterns like:

• Revenge trading after a loss
• Moving your stop loss to avoid getting stopped out
• Taking setups outside your plan because of FOMO
• Overtrading during choppy sessions

You can't fix what you can't see. A journal makes these invisible leaks visible.

3. It Builds Discipline

The simple act of writing down every trade — including the bad ones — forces accountability. When you know you have to log a trade, you think twice before taking an impulsive entry.

What to Track in Your Trading Journal

At minimum, log these fields for every trade:

Field	Why It Matters
Asset	Which markets are you most profitable in?
Direction	Are you better at longs or shorts?
Entry & Exit Price	The raw data for calculating P&L
Stop Loss	Proves you had a plan before entering
Position Size	Were you sizing correctly?
Date	Helps identify time-of-day and day-of-week patterns
Notes	The why behind the trade — setup type, rationale, emotions
Tags	Categorize by strategy (breakout, pullback, news, etc.)

The more context you capture, the more useful your journal becomes during review sessions.

How to Review Your Journal

Logging trades is step one. The real value comes from weekly reviews:

1. Sort by tag — Which strategy types are actually profitable?
2. Check your R:R distribution — Are you cutting winners short?
3. Look at your worst trades — Do they share a common pattern?
4. Compare win rate by session — Are you more profitable during London or New York?
5. Track your equity curve — Is your account trending up, or are you on a drawdown?

If a particular setup has a negative expectancy over 20+ trades, it's time to drop it or refine it.

Common Journaling Mistakes

Logging only winners. Your losses contain the most valuable lessons. Log every trade, no exceptions.

Not reviewing. A journal you never look back at is just a diary. Schedule a weekly 30-minute review session.

Too much complexity. Start simple. You can always add more fields later. The best journal is one you actually use.

Switching tools constantly. Pick one tool and stick with it. Consistency matters more than features.

Use Our Free Trading Journal

We built a free trading journal that runs entirely in your browser — no signup, no account, no data sent to any server. Your trades are saved locally using your browser's storage.

It automatically calculates:

• Win rate and total P&L
• Average risk-reward ratio
• Profit factor
• Current win/loss streak
• Equity curve showing your P&L over time

You can also export your trades as CSV for backup or analysis in a spreadsheet, and import trades from CSV if you're migrating from another tool.

Pair your journal with our free trading calculators to manage risk on every trade, and use GrandAlgo's TradingView indicators for precise entry signals based on institutional concepts.

The Bottom Line

A trading journal won't make a bad strategy profitable — but it will tell you why your strategy isn't working and what to change. It's the difference between guessing and knowing.

Start logging today. Your future self will thank you.