Keeping a Record of your Trades

Keeping a Record of all your past trades can be very helpful.  It can act as a scoring card and also allow you to find room to adjust.

It is amazing how something as simple as keeping a record of your trades can benefit you so much.  Yet most people who are in the stock market do not do this.  They will not take the time to learn, improve, and most importantly find out if their strategy is making them money.  As a result 90% of traders fail to make money in the stock market. They just don’t treat trading as a business.

Every successful trader should have a journal somewhere where they record there previous trades. In this journal you should keep track of the price you bought it at, the price you sold it at, your reason for entering/exiting and anything else you feel will be important.  You may also want to wright the exact date you placed the trade just in case you want to go back and review it.

You should keep your Trading Journal Safe and out of harms way.  Lock it up somewhere where you will not lose it but you have continued access to it. 

You should check your trading records once a month.  Check to see if your system was working and which strategies did the best last month.   You also want to check to see any mistakes you might have made.   Finding your mistakes is the first step to fixing them.  Basically use this time to review, how well did you do vs how well could you have done.     

Keeping a trading record is something all great traders have in common.  It allows you to learn and grow.  Remember trading is a business the more you treat it as such the better you will become.