Track Trades With a Forex Journal

Article Summary: Traders should look at Forex trading as a business. Learn to track and record your progress by creating a trading journal.

Trading a live Forex account has many parallels to owning an operating a business. Just as in business, traders should expect streaks of profits and losses. The key to long term success however, ultimately will fall in the analysis of these cycles. This way a trader can maximize their successes while working to reducing their periods of balance draw downs.

One of the easiest ways to track your trading is to keep a journal. Just as a business owner tracks inventory, a trader should also keep up with their closed positions. While keeping a journal may be difficult at first, recording your trades can help answer some critical questions about your trading techniques. To begin let’s look at an example of a sample journal.

Learn Forex –Sample Trading Journal

Keeping a Journal

While everyone may record different data in their journal, there are some important details that we should consider tracking. Above you will find a sample journal ledger with potential information that may become useful upon review. At minimum I would suggest at least tracking the currency pair, open/close prices, along with a trades p/l (profit and loss). Remember the more data that you keep the easier it will be to assess your past trades at a later date.

Also, be sure to include space to add notes in your journal. Traders using multiple entry techniques will want to track things such as chart time frames, indicators used, market conditions (range, trend, breakout) and any other information that factors into a trading decision.

Learn Forex –Running a Report

Running a Report

While keeping a trading journal, it will become important to familiarize yourself with running reports. Traders using the FXCM Trading Station will find the report function at the top of the trading platform. After clicking the report tab pictured above, you will see a popup menu that will allow you to customize your report parameters. You can select to run a statement for a custom period or all the way through the life of your account (Since Open).

The last parameter to select is the format drop down menu. This menu allows you to select how the report will be displayed on your computer. The FXCM Trading Station allowsreports to be run in HTML (web), XLS (Spreadsheet), or PDF (document) formats depending on your preference. Once all of your settings are set to your liking, click the “Run report” button on the bottom of the menu. When your report has been created, you can then begin running your analysis and studying your trading progress.

—Written by Walker England, Trading Instructor

To contact Walker, email wengland@fxcm.com. Follow me on Twitter @WEnglandFX.

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Track Trades With a Forex Journal