The Unkindness · Journaling craft · 7 min

What to Actually Record in a Trading Journal

Entries and exits are the least interesting things in your journal. The valuable record is the one about you.

Most trading journals record what a broker statement already knows: instrument, direction, entry, exit, P&L. That data matters, but it's the skeleton, not the body. The information that actually changes your trading is the part only you can supply — and it disappears within hours if you don't write it down.

The fill data (this should be automatic)

Entries, exits, size, fees, time of day. Necessary, boring, and the machine's job. If you're typing this by hand, you're spending your journaling energy on the lowest-value layer of the record. Automate it — CSV import at minimum, broker sync ideally — and save yourself for the layers below.

The context

• Which setup this was — from a named playbook, not vibes
• The session and conditions: what kind of day was the market having?
• A screenshot of the chart as you saw it, not as it looks in hindsight

The self — this is the record that pays

• Emotional state before the trade: calm, rushed, frustrated, euphoric after a win?
• Conviction level: was this an A+ setup or were you talking yourself into it?
• What you were telling yourself at entry — one honest sentence

Six months from now, the fill data will tell you what happened. Only these notes will tell you why. Patterns like revenge trading, hesitation after losses, or oversizing when euphoric live entirely in this layer — they're invisible in the numbers alone.

The aftermath

• Mistake tags, from a consistent vocabulary: chased, moved stop, early exit, oversized
• A grade against your playbook's rules — did you follow your own plan?
• One line: what would you tell yourself before taking this trade again?

Record the trader, not just the trade. The trade already happened; the trader is who shows up tomorrow.

This is the record TradeRavn is built around: the fills arrive on their own, and the journal asks you for the few human fields that no broker API will ever know.