I took the week off - feel lost

[Soultrader]

	Quote:	james_gsx
	Well I just went ahead and wrote a plan for next week. I looked over all the technicals for the YM, ES, and NQ. Checked the charts for all my swing trading stocks, then did research on all of my investments. Then I put together a list of what I'm looking for as far as trades go, and basically how I'm going to trade the whole week. It definitely helped and now I'm back in the proper mindset and ready for tomorrow.

One of the things I do is to continously write down my thoughts and trading plan on Microsoft word as the day progresses. I will usuallly have a page of notes typed up by the time the morning session ends. (includes premarket notes) Then I will reread it and prepare for the afternoon. I do the same thing during the afternoon and after the market closes. This helps me get into sync with the markets. I particular enjoy writing my afternoon outlook during the doldrums and go back to see how accurate my analysis was.

[cooter]

	Quote:	Soultrader
	One of the things I do is to continously write down my thoughts and trading plan on Microsoft word as the day progresses. I will usuallly have a page of notes typed up by the time the morning session ends. (includes premarket notes) Then I will reread it and prepare for the afternoon. I do the same thing during the afternoon and after the market closes. This helps me get into sync with the markets. I particular enjoy writing my afternoon outlook during the doldrums and go back to see how accurate my analysis was.

Could you keep these notes and publish them on a blog after the trading day is done?

[Soultrader]

	Quote:	cooter
	Could you keep these notes and publish them on a blog after the trading day is done?

I would love to but cant due to compliance reasons

[Nick1984]

Does keeping a trading journal help from early on? I havent really kept a detailed journal apart form what trades I took and why I took them. I'm still a relative noob when it comes to trading in general not just futures. My market analysis is still not up there with some of you guys who have been doing this for ages so I'm fearfull of writing up notes on the market and taking advice from myself who is pretty inexperienced!

[brownsfan019]

Nick - your analysis is not as important as just getting your thoughts/ideas on paper for future reference. There's many different ways to do this, so do a google search and maybe some can post some samples here. I'll see what I can post later this week.

Just start something and you'll be amazed at where it morphs into later. There's no right answer here, so just do it!!

[james_gsx]

Thanks for the idea to take notes on Microsoft word. I usually end up scribbling most of my notes since I'm busy watching the market and I can never understand what I wrote. I'm taking all my notes in word today, and so far it's working out very well.

[walterw]

Something nice its taking charts and righting on them... have an archive of them or publish some here... you can see your evolution on some issues, for good or for bad.... cheers Walter.

[Nick1984]

Cheers Brown & Walter.

[Nick1984]

I made my first entry into my diary.

I've attached it as a word file for those who want to have a look. On my charts the times look odd because the program im using is really not working with my time zone here and its effecting everyting I do. Im on Ninja Trader atm but I need to switch to something else.

If my market open and close is not set to 12AM for both then no charts work! Their tech support has no clue why this isnt working and I'm sick of it, its effecting me heaps and I've lost over the last few days trading days a lot of cash from trading "on tilt" with my frustration over the god damn charts.

Regardless thats just one small excuse which isn't going to help me in a long run so I have to take it on the chin and do something about it.

[brownsfan019]

Good stuff Nick! See, you just did it and now you got a journal started.

My suggestions:
1) Document ALL trades on your chart, with annotation if possible. I recommend SnagIt for doing this easily. I think this is really, really important. I also document ALL trades and whether I took them or not and why.

2) I think it's good that you are tracking what you DID make and what you SHOULD have made. For me, this reinforces doing your job and doing it the right way.

3) From there, you can start some sort of tracking mechanism - either Word or Excel will suffice. This way, come Fri, you can easily look at your results and say:

A. I did my job
B. I kinda did my job
C. I wasn't close to doing my job

Of course, you can then also see how your trading methodology is holding up over time as well. It's way too easy for one or two bad days to make you rethink your entire trading plan... We've all been there. But, if you have documented proof that over the last month you are up XX%, that's a little easier to work with.