Hello All,

I am day trader trading the Futures market (Crude oil and ES ). I trade the 5 minute chart.

In an effort to get better and record my stats, I bought a spreadsheet journal to tracking my metrics.

Besides the normal stats : RR, expectancy, MAE, MFE, Potential Profit after trade, market conditions, strategy type, Trade Grade.

What else should I be tracking in my trading spreadsheet to get better? One thing I added was Trade Mental/Feelings (i.e., Doubtful, Confident, Anxiety, Fearful).

Thanks all for your help.

what happened after entry , did the price action go side ways and slowly bounce around to take out your stop, did the price action exploded in the direction of your stop or in the direction of your profit target . if the price action is side ways you can learn to bail out with out taking a full stop . same idea on the profit targets .. if the trade is between 10 am to 11 am EST. depending on the speed of the explosive move you can learn when you have nailed the high or low of the day and can hold the trade for much larger targets .

In addition to tracking the strategy itself, I approach journaling as an opportunity to learn everything I can about my in-the-moment habits and to learn how I operate in the presence of fear. Because as we know, when we have capital at risk our thoughts and emotions are affected - we enter "survival mode" and we don't think or act as we would otherwise. Only the best traders have truly made a habit of trading mechanically, without emotion and without fear.

To do this I started tracking actual behaviors rather than descriptions of them - what I did as opposed to words like "Doubtful" or "Confident." The goal is to build a database of habit patterns and cross reference them with the outcome of each trade. Pivot Tables in Google Sheets are very helpful with this task.

To monitor fear level, one could track such things as:

- How often entries are pulled and re-entered
- A sign of indecision/fear
- Was the initial Profit Target honored or was it lowered (which is terrible habit to have)
- Most often fear of losing unrealized gains
- Trade duration
- Helpful to see how long until discipline breaks down
- Did I engage in distracting activities during the trade
- Helpful to gauge fear of uncertainty
- Personally, I track if I stand up from my desk for a few minutes after the entry and exit
- Helpful to stop me from engaging in anger/revenge/euphoria trading

Also, I have found it very helpful to assign a number to my most common errors and track them. In time, I could see my most common error for both winners and losers. These errors include:

1 - Setup not complete before entry
2 - Took Profit too early
3 - Allowed a winner turned into a loser
4 - Revenge trade
5 - Added to the position poorly
6 - Tried to catch a falling knife

Journaling can be a way to learn about and address your shortcomings, as well as learn of habits that were previously unknown to you. What you track and how you track it will evolve as you do it, so start small and manageable and in time it will become a powerful tool in learning about yourself as well as your strategy.