Do you know what is a forex buy and sell journal? Do you know the importance of maintaining a forex trading journal? A trading journal is a record or a book which keeps track of all of your successful or unsuccessful trades. It is very important for you to keep track of all your trades, whether you win the trade or lose the trade as you can use this information for future trades as a reference. Lets say entered a trade with some reason in specific trading hours, but you lost the trade. The technique might have worked for you earlier but not in this trading hours. With this trade, you come to know that the technique won’t work in the specific trading hours. If you don’t note it down or keep track of it, in future you may do the same mistake again and you will lose the trade again. A trading journal can be used to refer all the mistakes you did in the past so that you won’t do them again. All successful forex traders maintain a forex trading journal.
So if you want to maintain your own trading journal what are the important things that you have note down. The following are some of the things that you can note when you start writing your own forex trading journal.
Trading Currency Pair: Note down the currency pair you are trading or you have traded for example EURUSD, GBPUSD etc.
Long or Short: In forex terms Long means buying a currency pair and short means selling a currency pair. Record whether you bought the currency pair or sold the currency pair.
Trade Won or Lost: Record whether you won the trade or lost the trade. If you won the trade note down the reason why you won the trade like any technique you used, any economic news you used to enter the trade etc. Also note down the exit strategy you used for coming out of the trade. If you lost the trade then also you have to note down the reasons for losing the trade.
Trading time: Record the day and time you entered the trade. Also record the time zones you entered like asian time zone, london timings, NY timings etc. This is very important as some trades may work only in specific timings and this information, you can use in future.
Entry Price, Exit Price and No. of Pips: Record the entry price and exit price and also the number of pips you lost or won.
No. of lots you traded: Record the number lots you traded.
Any techniques used: Record any techniques or methods you used for your trading.
Screenshots: Screenshots are very important when you are maintaining a trading journal. As all of us know a picture speaks a thousand words. Even if you note down all the above points and if you don’t have a picture, in future, you may not be able to understand your own trade you took. So saving a picture of the trades you are doing is very important.
The above are some of the things that you have to note down if you want to become a successful trader. You may also note down any additional remarks, if you want.
How to maintain a trading journal: Generally forex traders use an excel work sheet or a microsoft word to keep notes of the above things (to maintain trading journal). But when the number of trades are increasing the size of the files also increases.
Moreover when you are saving the screenshots of the trades the file sizes increases more and more. So it causes problems in opening or saving these files. So after a certain point you may have to start a new excel or word file. These problems cause you trouble when you want to sort your trades. For example you want to take a look at all your lost trades or all your winning trades. It is very difficult to sort the trades if you save them in excel or word files.
That is why, forexbees.com is offering you a successful way of maintaining your own trading journal. Once you login to forexbees.com, under navigation block on the left side you will see the link “Create Content”. Click on the link and you will see the “Trading Journal” link. If you click on that you will see the trading journal form with the following options you can use when you are creating your own trading journal post. This is completely private and no elase, other than you, can watch your trading journal.
Title: You can enter any title that fits your trade like “EURUSD break out trade – hourly chart – lost” or “GBPUSD MACD convergence divergence trade – daily chart – won” etc. It’s better if your title can tell you what type of trade you are doing on the first glance so that it will be easy for you in future to find out the trade you want.
Trade Date: You can select the date on which you did the trade. If you are currently doing the trade you can leave the date as it is.
Vocabularies: Vocabularies are the different categories that you can use to categorize your trades. The following are the different categories available that you can select when creating your trading journal post.
Currency Pair: This category shows the different currency pairs like “EURUSD”, “GBPUSD” etc. You need to select the curreny pair you are trading when you are creating you own trading journal post.
Short or Long Trade: If you bought the currency pair you can select the “Long Trade” option or if you sold the currency pair you can select the “Short Trade” option. In forex terminology Long Trade means buying a currency pair. Short Trade means selling a currency pair.
Trade Won or Lost: If you won the trade you can select the option “Trade Won” option or you can select the “Trade Lost” option.
Teaser or Summary: Teaser or summary is a small description of your trading journal entry. You can generally copy and paste the first few lines of the body of the trading journal.
Body: You can enter any details about your trade.
Image Picker: This can be used to upload images or screenshots. This shows four tabs. Upload, Current, Browse, Groups. Under “Upload” tab page you can upload images or screenshots of your trades. This contains the image file field using which you have to select the image or screenshot of your forex trade to upload. After that it asks for the thumnail size of the screenshot. I generally use a thumbnail size of 400 px as I like to align the image or screenshot in the middle of the content. “Scale Image” you don’t need to use it. “Title” of the image. You can enter any title for the image as this will appear on the top of the image in your trading journal post. “Description” of the image. You can enter any description for the image and this will appear at the bottom of the image.
Once you upload any images you can see them under the “Current Images” tab and also under the “Browse Images” tab. “Current Images” tab shows the images currently updated and only for this post. “Browse Images” tab shows all the images that you have uplodated for all the posts that you have uploaded the pictures. Select any picture. If you have entered the title and description select the “Description” check box. Othewise you won’tsee the title and description that you have entered for that picture. If you want to insert the screenshot left aligned in the body select left option. If you want to insert the screenshot right alighned in the content select right option. If you want to insert the screenshot in the center of the content select the option “none”. Click on the body field somewhere. Click on insert button and the image will be inserted in the body field.
