Journaling and Reviewing Performance.

Your platform already records what you made and lost. If that is all your journal has, it adds nothing. Worse, it teaches you to judge every trade by its result. A lucky rule break goes in the "good" column. A valid trade that got stopped goes in the "bad" column. After a month, you have learned to trust the wrong things.

A useful journal records the decision, not just the outcome. What did the plan say? What did you actually do? How did you feel at the moment it mattered? With those three things, you can tell whether a losing week came from the setup, from your execution, or from your state. Without them, you are guessing.

Here is the honest truth about journals: most traders start one and stop within two weeks. Usually it is because the template was too long. The best journal is the one you will still be filling in three months from now. Keep logging a trade under a minute, and put the deeper thinking into the weekly review.

Plan layer: what you intended before entry. Setup name, pair, session, planned entry, stop, target and risk in dollars. Ideally you fill this in before you press the button. If you cannot fill it in, you should not be taking the trade.

Execution layer: what actually happened. Actual entry and exit, result in dollars and in R, any change to the stop or target, and whether every rule was followed. Add one screenshot at entry and one at exit.

Mindset layer: one or two lines. Your state before the session from 1 to 5, what you felt at the hardest moment, and your escalation-ladder level if you use one. Short and specific beats long and vague. "Wanted to close at +0.5R because the last two winners reversed" is useful. "Felt nervous" is not.

R puts every trade on the same scale. If you risk $50 and make $90, that is +1.8R. If you later trade a bigger account and risk $125, a +1.8R trade is still +1.8R. That lets you compare months fairly and spot changes in your trading, not just changes in your size.

MAE, maximum adverse excursion, is the furthest a trade went against you while it was open. MFE, maximum favourable excursion, is the furthest it went in your favour. Some platforms and journal tools record these automatically. If yours does not, note the extreme prices when you close the trade.

Over 20 or more trades, these two numbers answer questions your gut cannot. If your winners almost never go more than 0.5R against you, your stop might be wider than the setup needs. If your trades often reach +2.5R but you close at +1R, your exit is costing you. Do not change anything based on five trades. Wait until the pattern is clear.

At the end of each session, before you do anything else, answer four questions. Did I follow my plan on every trade? Did I respect my session limits? What was the hardest moment, and what did I do? Is there anything I need to watch for tomorrow?

That is it. Do not analyse the strategy daily. One day of trades is too small a sample to tell you anything about the setup. The daily review is about catching behaviour early, like a rule break on Tuesday that could become a habit by Friday.

If you broke a rule today, write it in one line with the trigger. "Oversized after two losses because I wanted to finish green" is perfect. You will see these lines again on the weekend.

Do the daily review even on days you did not trade. "No valid setups, stayed out" is a good entry. It records that you passed when you should have, and it keeps the habit going on quiet days, which is when most journals quietly die.

If you skipped a day of journaling, do not try to rebuild it from memory a week later. Fill in what the platform history shows, mark the mindset fields as missing, and carry on. A gap is better than a made-up record.

Set a fixed time, for example Saturday morning, and give it 30 to 45 minutes. Go through these in order.

First, the numbers: total trades, result in R, win rate, average winner and average loser, and your rule-adherence rate (rule-following trades divided by all trades).

Second, split the results: what did rule-following trades produce, and what did rule-breaking trades produce? This one split answers most "is it me or the strategy?" questions.

Third, the mistakes: count your mistake tags and find the one that cost the most in R. Not the most annoying one. The most expensive one.

Fourth, missed trades: valid setups you skipped, and why. Hesitation after losses often shows up here first.

Finally, pick one change for next week. Make it simple and checkable, like "no manual exits before target" or "15-minute break after every loss". Write it at the top of next week's journal and check it at the next review.