It feels like after a hundred trades you already know whether the system works. In practice memory is selective: winning entries stand out more than the ones that went in off-plan, and the whole thing blurs into a vague sense of "I'm trading fine".
A trading journal isn't a spreadsheet for the record, it's the only way to separate real statistics from impression. Without it three questions stay unanswered:
- Whether the system works at all, or the profit rests on a couple of lucky trades.
- Where you systematically drift from the plan: tightening a stop too early, entering without a signal, sitting in a loss too long.
- Which instrument, time of day or setup actually delivers, and which one just eats attention.
Without a record of every trade, these questions get answered by eye, and the eye is predictably biased toward what it wants to see.
I built journal.kovalev.trade for this: log every trade, entry, exit, size, R, and the journal calculates win rate, profit factor and drawdown itself. First 7 days free.
#trading #tradingjournal #discipline #statistics