What are trading journals and their usefulness?

I am a novice forex trading aspirants who is ready to enter into forex trading. I have not yet finalized where to open an Account. But what are trading journals? What is their usefulness who wants to be a successful trader?

james_smart said:

I am a novice forex trading aspirants who is ready to enter into forex trading. I have not yet finalized where to open an Account. But what are trading journals? What is their usefulness who wants to be a successful trader?

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Hi James,
Welcome to T2W,
In the main red menu bar at the top of the page, you'll see 'Articles' which, as he name implies, is a collection of articles from a wide variety of sources. Some are by ordinary T2W members and some are by internationally recognized experts. Among the latter group is Brett Steenbarger who discusses journals in the two articles which you can access via the link.
Enjoy!
Tim.

I think to run a public trading journal can help a lot. You can get advices from trading pros and ideas to improve your trading strategy.

So i think a public trading journal bring a "win win" situation for the journal writer and the reader.

james_smart said:

I am a novice forex trading aspirants who is ready to enter into forex trading. I have not yet finalized where to open an Account. But what are trading journals? What is their usefulness who wants to be a successful trader?

Click to expand...

There are some interesting jounals on here but, before starting one, ask yourself if you are going to keep it up.

I would be hopeless at it and admire all those who can post their errors, as well as their successes for everyone to see, day after day. I know that I would be hopeless because I tried a diary, given to me by an aunt, for Christmas, every year, until she died.

I scribble my trades on a jotter and, sadly, rarely go back to check them out but, Hey! I'm still trading with reasonable success after all these years!

More seriously, writing a journal every day helps keep the plan on course.

Hi janmes - Definitely, keep a log. Although I have been trading for years I only recently started a log which I can actually maintain - looking back over itrs first month I found I had been buying shares and holding longs in a falling market and opening shorts in a rising market. Not rocket science I admit but without a cool look at what I had been doing I might have not seen the significance. I also found that in one period, though I had made a profit, all this profit was entirely down to position size, not choice of direction, market or strategy - this was a real eye-opener.

I expect the log will in the future help me identify market phases when particular strategies will not work 100% and ned to be suspended or amended.