Difficulties of Keeping a Trade Journal

Keeping a trading journal is hard.

But so is losing all your trading capital, failing as a forex trader, giving up, never to return to forex trading ever again.

And reminiscing about the good 'ol simpler days of being happy that N'Sync was performing in town.

Which would you rather choose?

Entering trades in a journal forces you to view the trades in black and white, rather than simply relying on your memory, which for most humans, is a stretch.

More importantly, a journal allows a trader to step back and view their trades as a group of trades, and not as individual and ultimately random transactions.

Boy, this sounds like a lot of work, doesn't it?

Heck ya it is, but doesn't anything worth achieving require work?!?

Keeping a journal is the equivalent of an athlete's practice.

It's not uncommon for a professional athlete to spend far more time practicing or training for an event than actually participating in it.

According to Tim Grover, Michael Jordan's personal physical trainer:

"Michael would go for 40 or 50 points one night, and the next morning he was right back at it in practice. He just couldn't take a day off. His mental toughness was unbelievable, but the reason was that he was so physically ready every day. He used to have a saying, 'I practice so hard because that makes the games easy for me.'"

John Wooden, winner of a record 10 NCAA Men's Basketball Championships, and known as one the greatest minds basketball has ever known, ran a very strict and disciplined two hour practice, 5 days a week, in preparation for a 40-minute basketball game.

You know who much time that is? That's 10 hours (or 600 minutes) of practice for 40 minutes of the real thing.

And that's not all! Not only did he stress meticulous and deliberate practice, he kept a LOG of how every practice went. Coach Wooden would refer to his practice logs if his team had a problem he couldn't solve.

For example, if his current team was shooting poorly, he would research his old practice logs to determine how he improved shooting. Even in the days of no computers or iPads, Coach Wooden understood the importance of strict record keeping!

While the act of journaling really isn't that hard, it does take consistent time and effort. It is definitely a time-intensive process.

1. Why Keep a Trade Journal?
2. Benefits of Keeping a Journal
3. What Should You Record in Your Journal?
4. Potential Trading Area
5. Entry Trigger
6. Position Sizing
7. Trade Management Rules
8. Trade Retrospective
9. Trading Journal Statistics
10. Reviewing Your Trading Journal
11. Difficulties of Keeping a Trade Journal
12. MeetPips.com
13. Summary: Keeping a Trade Journal

Forex Training in the School of Pipsology