To The Moon

1. Setting Up a Trading Journal

You should start setting up a trading journal right after you get started in the market. Before doing anything else, you need to have a record of everything that you do. This way, if something goes wrong, you have a reference point to review what went wrong. If you want to keep track of how much money you’ve earned, then you would create a column in your journal called “Cash Earned”. If you want to know where you spend your money, you could add a column called “Spending Money”. You could even make columns for each month, so you know exactly where you spent your money throughout the year.

2. Daily Logging

The first thing to do is log your trades daily. How much did you trade? What time of day was it? What were you thinking at the time? These questions can help you improve your strategy and become more aware of your own trading style. Once you have logged your trades for the day, you should move onto what happened during the week. This is easier than logging your trades daily. On Monday, you might want to go back over the weekend and see how many trades you made. And if you had any big wins or losses, these should be noted in the “Weekly Summary” section of your journal.

3. Monthly Logging

Monthly logging is a little bit different than weekly logging. Weekly logging helps to find patterns and habits within yourself. Month-to-month logging lets you see trends in your trading. Trends can tell you things about yourself, like whether you tend to sell stocks out of a position. If you notice that you are selling stocks out of a position, this may mean that you are holding positions longer than necessary. Or, if you notice that you are buying stocks out of a position more often than usual, maybe you should take a look at your portfolio and make sure you aren't making some bad decisions. To find out more, check out our short article on finding trends in your trading.

4. Quarterly Logging

Quarterly logging gives you the opportunity to dig deeper into your trading, and learn what works best for you. By looking at quarterly logs, you can discover your strengths and weaknesses in trading. Maybe you like to buy low and sell high or perhaps you prefer to hold until prices reach their bottom before selling. Either way, learning about your tendencies can help you improve your trading strategies.

5. Annual Logging

Finally, annual logging is probably the most detailed. In order to get the most accurate results possible, you need to understand what your goals are. Do you want to increase your profits? Reduce your losses? Learn more about your results and determine what you can do differently in the future.