A West Coast Story on Journaling

BellaGeneral Comments

thisiswhatatraderlookslike

Hi Mike–I listened to your video regarding the trader that was having issues journaling. I solved that same issue by typing onto the chart itself – – the reasons why I bought and sold at the exact point of entry and exit. As you know, Tradestation can pinpoint the exact point of entry and exit if you turn on that function.It’s so much easier to learn from the visual texting notes on the chart, as opposed to going from the journal back to the chart and back to the journal again. And– you don’t lose “the flow” because your eyes are always on the chart! Let me know if that helps him.
Best to you… Amy 🙂

@MikeBellafiore

I love this idea.  We do this at our firm as well.  We call it the Book of Charts.

One of our new traders, let’s call him Big Dog, we noticed getting very good.  And trading with very large size.

At our firm, it is important for us to study the traders that succeed.  That way we can hire more like them.  And redouble our efforts with training best practices that led to success.

In studying Big Dog, we learned about one of his best practices.  He made this practice exercise up all on his own as a very new trader.  He took snapshots of his favorite chart setups each day, marked up the charts with buy and sell notes, and then religiously reviewed these chart patterns.  Just like you Amy!

West Coast meets East Coast.

This enabled him to internalize these patterns.  This helped him trade his favorite setups with more confidence.  He could size up better because he knew exactly what chart patterns he was looking for in markets, had the confidence to trade big, and could pull the trigger quickly since he had visualized trading certain setups with aggression.

So we co-opted this exercise from him.  And now our new and developing traders perform this exercise as a part of their daily improvement routine.

Apparently, all we had to do was just ask you Amy 🙂

Excellent work by you!  This is indeed an important exercise for trading development.

*no relevant positions

** Amy is Amy Kahn of The Scottsdale/Phoenix Traders and Investors Meetup Group