How to Keep a Trading Journal You'll Actually Use (Template + Examples)

Most traders start a trading journal at least once. Most stop within two weeks.

It's rarely because journaling doesn't work. It's because the journal asks for too much, at the worst moment, and gives nothing back. You finish a red session, open a spreadsheet with 25 columns, fill in half of them, and never look at it again.

This guide shows a simpler way: what to write down for every trade, a template you can copy today, real examples, and the weekly review that turns the journal into better trading.

What a trading journal is (and what it's for)

A trading journal is a record of every trade you take: what you traded, why you took it, how you managed it, and what happened.

The numbers matter, but they're not the point. Your broker already stores your fills and your P&L. A journal is for the part your broker can't see: your decisions. Did you follow your plan? Did you enter where you meant to? Did you move your stop? Did you take a trade you'd normally skip because you were down for the day?

If your journal only repeats what your broker statement says, it won't change how you trade.

Why most trading journals get abandoned

• Too many fields. If logging one trade takes 5 minutes, you'll skip it on busy days, which are the days you need it most.
• Logged too late. By the evening you remember a cleaner version of the trade than the one you took.
• Never reviewed. A journal that nobody reads is just a diary. The value comes from the weekly review, not the logging.
• Only numbers, no context. "ES short, -$310" tells you nothing about the mistake. Was it the setup, the entry, or the exit?

The fix is a short journal, filled in right after each trade, and reviewed once a week.

How to keep a trading journal: what to log for every trade

Keep it to these fields. You can fill them in under a minute.

The facts (fast to fill in)

1. Date and time
2. Market / symbol (e.g. MNQ, ES, EURUSD)
3. Long or short
4. Size
5. Entry price, stop, target
6. Exit price and result ($ or R)
7. Account (live, sim, or prop/funded)

The decisions (the part that matters)

1. Setup: which of your setups was it? Use a short name you reuse every time ("ORB long", "VWAP reclaim", "failed breakout").
2. Why now: one line. What did you see that made you click?
3. Plan followed? Yes / no. If no, which rule did you break?
4. Emotion before entry: calm, bored, rushed, angry, trying to win back a loss.
5. One lesson: one line. What would you do the same, or differently?

That's it. If you want more fields later, add them. Start small enough that you'll actually do it.

A free trading journal template

You can keep this in Excel, Google Sheets, Notion or a notebook. Here are the columns:

• Date
• Symbol
• L/S
• Size
• Entry
• Stop
• Exit
• Result
• Account
• Setup
• Why now
• Plan followed?
• Emotion
• Lesson

Tips that make a spreadsheet journal work:

• Use drop-down lists for Setup, Emotion and Plan followed. Typing the same thing differently ("ORB", "orb long", "opening range") makes it impossible to filter later.
• Add a Rule broken column with a short list: "moved stop", "no stop", "oversized", "outside my hours", "revenge trade", "chased entry".
• Keep one tab per month, so the file stays fast.

Trading journal examples

Here are two real days from our founder's 50k funded-account challenge, which he posts publicly, written the way a journal should read.

Example 1: a red day with discipline

• Symbol: MNQ. Two shorts.
• Results: -$159, then -$243. Day: -$402, 0 for 2.
• What happened next: nothing. Two trades, then done for the day.
• Lesson: two losses and done is a red day you can come back from.

Example 2: a red day without it

• Symbol: MNQ. Five longs.
• Results: one green (+$6), four red. Day: -$1,213.50.
• Review note: the first two trades cost -$894. The three trades after that are the part to review.
• Lesson: the first two losses weren't the real damage. The trades after them were. A rule worth testing: stop after two losses.

Notice the second day: the numbers alone say "bad day". The journal says why, and turns it into one rule you can follow tomorrow.

The weekly review: where a journal pays off

Once a week (weekend works well), spend 30 minutes on your journal:

1. Filter by setup. Which setup made money? Which one lost? Stop trading the one that keeps losing, or fix it.
2. Filter by "Plan followed = no". Add up what those trades cost you. For many traders, this number is bigger than their total loss for the week.
3. Look at time of day. Do your losses cluster late in the session, or right after a loss?
4. Pick one thing to fix next week. Only one. Write it at the top of next week's tab.

The goal isn't a perfect journal. It's one better decision every week.

Spreadsheet journal vs. video journal

A spreadsheet tells you what happened. It can't show you the moment you broke the plan.

• Your row says "ES short, -$310". It doesn't show that you dragged the stop up twice before it hit.
• Your row says "entered at 4,512". It doesn't show that you entered before the candle closed, against your own rule.
• Your row says "emotion: calm". The recording might say otherwise.

That's why many traders add screen recordings to their journal: you watch the trade back and see exactly what you did, not what you remember doing.

The problem with recording is the work: starting and stopping a screen recorder, then scrubbing through hours of footage to find a two-minute trade. (We wrote a full guide on how to record your TradingView trades.)

How TradeCut keeps a video trading journal for you

TradeCut was built for this. It records your trading session and saves one short clip per trade, from entry to exit, automatically. (More on the video trading journal.)

• TradingView: TradeCut detects when you open and close a trade, so each trade becomes its own clip. NinjaTrader 8 (Windows) works through an add-on. On other platforms, you mark the entry and exit by hand.
• Every trade is tagged with symbol, direction, time and result, and filed under your trading account.
• Performance screen: your stats and a calendar. Click a day to see its trades and open the clip for each one.
• CSV import (for example from Tradovate): bring in your full trade record, including trades you didn't record. Recorded trades link to their clip.

So your weekly review becomes: filter the losing trades, open the clips, and watch the moment it went wrong.

You can still keep your "why now" and "lesson" lines. TradeCut just adds the part a spreadsheet can't give you: the replay.

FAQ