Last Updated on 4 January, 2025 by Håkan Samuelsson

Tradingjournal som fungerar

Tradingjournaler anser jag vara det kanske viktigaste verktyget som finns om man håller på med aktier och trading. Det gäller både trading och vanliga portfölj investeringar. Att ha koll på sina siffror, statistik mm är A och O om man vill utvecklas och på sikt tjäna pengar. En journal bör inte bara handla om statistik och siffror utan även viktig information om dig och hur du hanterar situationerna som uppstår.
Det finns oerhört mycket att lära sig om detta och har du hållit på ett tag så kommer du märka att den kanske största fienden till att tjäna pengar inte är börsen i sig utan du och dina demoner som saboterar för dig själv i tid och otid. Tro mig, genom att logga viktig information om ditt beteende så kommer du närmare och närmare lösningar på hur du skall undvika de som förstör mest för din trading. Det låter kanske lite flummigt men efter du har hållit på ett tag så förstår du mer. Slutmålet är bland annat mer klarhet i hur du och din trading fungerar, mer självförtroende samt en större förståelse om din trading i helhet. Tradingjournaler förekommer inte bara inom trading utan många stora ledare och historiska figurer och sysslat med liknade aktiviteter. Googlar du på det så finns det massor att läsa om du inte tycker att jag är tillräckligt övertygande ännu…
För fulltime traders inom daytrading och swingtrading så är det som att driva ett företag. Din journal är som din affärsplan. Den rätta tradingplanen, som utförs konsekvent och disciplinerat, kan vara skillnaden mellan att lyckas och inte lyckas inom trading.

5 tips för att komma igång med en tradingdagbok

• Bestäm dig för att sätta igång överhuvudtaget
• Starta långsamt och med inte för mycket info
• Var så organiserad som du kan vara
• Gör det en rolig aktivitet
• Överarbeta det inte. Då är det troligare att du misslyckas

Det finns en hel del info om detta på nätet om man söker lite men en av dom som är bäst lämpad att lära ut detta är nog Brett Steenbarger. Nedan har jag en gammal artikel som han skrivit i ämnet som jag tycker är mycket bra. Han har även skrivit ett antal böcker som är mycket bra (mest trading psykologi) men även en klassiker inom just journalskrivning som är mycket bra: The Daily Trading Coach: 101 Lessons for Becoming Your Own Trading Psychologist (Wiley Trading) Längre ner på sidan har jag även med en bra artikel med Charles Kirk om Journalskriving.
Här hittar du en hel del förslag på journaler i Excelformat.

(Här är ett exempel till. Journal)

Här är ett par programvaror som är avsett som trading journal:

• Edgewonk
• Tradebench

Vi pratar mycket om vikten av en tradingjournal och hur man startar och sköter den i våra utbildningar.

Trading Journals That Work 

By Brett N. Steenbarger, Ph.D.

www.brettsteenbarger.com

In an article for the Trade2Win website that should appear shortly, I review five of the common mistakes that traders make when utilizing trading journals.  My experience is that few strategies are as promising—and few so misunderstood and misused—as trading journals.  Here I’d like to amplify some of my remarks in the Trade2Win article and make five suggestions for the creation and maintenance of a trading journal:

1. Make sure the journal includes observations about you and your trading and about the markets themselves.  I’ve found that trader journals usually are skewed toward self-analysis and include little in the way of market observation.  When I began as a trader, I printed out intraday charts of each day’s action and wrote comments on these, pointing out the patterns that I wanted to watch for in the future.  After doing this for months, I sensitized myself to the point where I could see the patterns emerging in real time.  The trading journal is a learning tool and a great mechanism for training your eye to see the setups you want to be trading.

2. Make sure the journal includes observations about your best trades.  As I emphasized in my book, the idea is to discover the trader that you are when you’re at your best.  Many traders use the journal as a means of self-criticism, and they only journal when they’re having problems in the market.  Over time, you want to isolate what you’re doing when you’re making money, create a model of those success elements, and then rehearse them so that they become habits.  The journal can be a tool for discovery, helping you find out what you do well.

3. Make sure the journal truly prepares you for the coming trading day.  Many times journals chronicle what has happened in the past, but do not include concrete plans for the next day’s trade.  If you run statistical analyses to determine if there is an edge the next day, these should be part of the journal.  If there are setups that have been working in the recent market (sectors that are leading your market; intermarketrelationships), these go in the journal as well.  The idea, as I mentioned in the article, is to make your journal your business plan for the day.

4. Make sure the journal outlines specific steps for improvement.  It is not enough to write vague generalities, such as “I need to hold my winners longer” or “I need to stick with my discipline”.  Identifying specific steps you will take to hold winners (proper setting of profit targets, self-control strategies, etc.) or maintain discipline (risk management, taking breaks, etc.) makes the journal a game plan for the next day.  Your journal, outlining how you’ll approach the market—and how you’ll approach yourself—each trading session will allow you to review each day and see if you met your goals.  Such review is an essential step in the kind of continuous improvement that marks winners across all disciplines.

5. Make sure the journal includes performance metrics.  Some of the ones I prefer are:

*  Number of long and short trades – I correlate this to the trend condition of the market to see if I’m trading with the current or against it; if I’m trading in a one-sided way in a range-bound market.  The number of trades also tells me if I’m overtrading. *  Number of winning and losing trades – When I’m trading well, I have more winning trades than losers by a reasonably healthy margin.  When the ratio dips for more than a short time period, I need to re-evaluate my trading and my trading strategies. *  Time holding trades – I’m a short-term trader, and I tend to have a relatively narrow time band in which I hold trades.  Moving beyond that band tells me I’m either cutting trades short or going for home runs—and neither of those have worked for me in the past. *  Time holding losing trades versus winners – It is very hard to make money over time by holding losers.  Eventually, the size of the losers becomes greater than the winners so that even a trader who has more winning trades than losers can end up in the red. *  Profit/Loss broken down by long and short trades and broken down by market condition.  This tells me if I’m trading ranges better than breakout movements; whether I’m doing better on the long side or the short side.  If my performance is significantly worse in one mode than another, I start to examine my trading for needed improvements. By now you’re probably getting the idea that the journal is a time-intensive process.  That’s exactly right.  Keeping a journal is the equivalent of an athlete’s practice: it’s not at all unusual to spend far more time training for an event than actually participating in it.  If your journal is a hurriedly scribbled paragraph per day, the odds are good that it lacks the specifics you need to accurately assess what you’re doing well and what needs improvement.  For full-time traders, trading is a business.  The journal is a business plan.  The right plan, executed faithfully, can be the difference between success and failure in any endeavor. Brett N. Steenbarger, Ph.D. is Director of Trader Development for Kingstree Trading, LLC in Chicago and Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, NY.  He is also an active trader and writes occasional feature articles on market psychology for a variety of publications.  The author of The Psychology of Trading (Wiley; January, 2003), Dr. Steenbarger has published over 50 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on short-term approaches to behavioral change.  His new, co-edited book The Art and Science of Brief Therapy is a core curricular text in psychiatry training programs.  Many of Dr. Steenbarger’s articles and trading strategies are archived on his website, www.brettsteenbarger.com ——————————————————————————————

1. Make The Commitment: To help start and maintain the habit, make the commitment that for every day for at least one entire quarter with no exceptions you will write a journal entry. It needs to be daily at first to start the habit so you’ll need to update it on weekend as well. To avoid running out of time daily to do it, make the journal entry the very first thing you do every day before anything else. I would also encourage you to set a reward (i.e. a carrot) you really want (i.e. golf outing, new gadget, etc.) as long as you keep that daily commitment for an entire quarter.
2. Start Slowly: Put and stick to a ten minute time limit on all journal entries. Yep, actually set a timer on the time you spend. Many think they must spend 30 minutes or even hours journaling out everything which is why they never have the time and quickly abandon their commitment to try it. In addition, long journal entries will not make the process helpful as you’ll be just as reluctant to review them later on. After all, who has the time to reread a bunch of long-winded rambling garbage? No me, that’s for sure and I doubt you have the time either. So, in just a few sentences, you should be able to write out everything you need to keep for that day. Be concise, clear, and only put in items you think are worth remembering. Before you write every journal entry, think first of how you might later use these notes to develop an edge. This will help you know what to include and what to leave out.
3. Be Organized From The Start: Create an organized, logical structure from the start. Making random comments in a journal without any overall structure is not going to be useful. You want to be able to review these journaling entries after some time has passed so organize it in a manner that makes sense to you with this in mind. From the day one, you need to figure out what each journal entry should include and how plan to organize your daily thoughts. I’d recommend using a bullet format at first to make sure you’re concise and to the point as well. Concise, clear entries are much better than long-winded journaling notes that you won’t have time to read/filter later on.
4. Make It Fun: If you don’t actually enjoy the process of keeping a journal chances are good you will stop doing it. Fortunately, there are lots of online services now likeEvernote and others that help make journaling fun, easy to do from anywhere on just about any device, not very time consuming and also secure. At first, I would not recommend that you do a open blog, post notes on twitter, etc. for all to see and comment upon. This is only just for you and no one else!
5. Share It: If you have a trusted mentor or trading buddy or just someone you respect who trades successfully, you need to share your journal with him (or her) and ask for feedback and suggestions on making it better and things to include based on their experience. While most successful traders are reluctant to share their own journals, you will still find many are willing to provide feedback on your journal and offer helpful suggestions. Seek out that help after some time passes and you have already established a consistent journaling routine.

Like most things, the most difficult thing is just to get started to develop the habit in your daily routine. These five recommendations should help get you past that point. If you make and stick with your commitment to maintain a trading journal, in time you will gain a powerful tool in your trading weaponry.Through the years, many of my best trades have come following reviewing my notes of prior situations and setups that I am facing once again. In many ways, that has proven to be a valuable edge for me and, if you do the same, in time you will discover this as well. Once you do and you find out that the process isn’t as awful or as difficult as you currently might think or fear, then it is time to actually improve your journal and focus so that it really will help you. At first, it is ok just to do what it takes simply to develop the habit. After that, I would highly recommend reading the following trading journal suggestions from my friend Dr. Brett N. Steenbarger. He offers some terrific ideas on what a trading journal should and should not include to help you make the most of this exercise!

Documenting your thoughts and fears along with how you felt about your trade results in an online trading journal is critical for success.