The #1 Secret of Profitable Traders: Use A Trading Journal (Or Lose Forever) transcript

This secret journal is something we've only gave to our inner circle of traders and for the first time ever, we're making it available to the public. So, here's the trading log where you input all your trades. This here is the dashboard which then compiles and aggregates everything you inputed in the trading log and presents it to you with useful [music] data. And this here is the magic of how this journal turns regular traders into winners.

The dashboard tells you things like which strategies have been working best for you. It shows you what exit types worked the best for you. It shows you the mistakes you've made over and over again. It shows you what riskreward has [music] worked best. It shows you what specific assets you've made the most money on so that you can focus more on those. And there's so much more data it gives you, which we'll be getting into.

The reason you have to journal is because it's impossible to remember all these details [music] of every trade you took. This is literally the most important step of your trading journey and is what all pro traders use daily. This is the secret to trading successfully. Before we continue, please hit the like button as it allows our team to continue to produce more free content on YouTube. So, let's find some trading setups you would add to your journal.

Let's say you are only looking for trend continuation trades and only want to trade stocks at the moment. This is the Coinbase stock 4hour time frame. You notice a moving uptrend, so you want to trade with the trend. Price consolidates and forms a descending triangle pattern. Price breaks above the pattern with this massive bullish engulfing candle that also makes a higher high which signals strong bullish momentum and a possible continuation of the uptrend.

So you decide to apply your own trend continuation strategy and decide to enter on this candle here, stop loss placed here, profit target placed here. As price moved up, you started trailing your stop- loss with the trend to lock in profits. And when price pulled back, it touched your trailing stop-loss and you were automatically closed out for a profit. Your emotional state during this trade was confident. as you've seen Bitcoin skyrocketing recently and know that brokerages like Coinbase are positively correlated.

Let's now jump back to the journal and log this winning trade. This is the trading log tab and is where you do all your journaling. These aren't actual trades we took. We just pre-filled this one so that you can get an overall idea of how it all works. First, we add the date and time. Click the drop-own and select stock. Now for the asset section, we need to jump to the setup page. So click it at the bottom here. Add the Coinbase stock symbol into the trading assets section.

Once we have this, we jump back to the trading lock. So now for the asset section, when you click the drop down, you can find the Coinbase stock symbol you just added and you select it. Next, you choose your account. There are three options, your forex account, your crypto account, or your stock account. And since we are trading a stock, we select our stock account. You can also customize and add as many different accounts as you want in the setup page.

For the strategy section, select trend continuation strategy since that's the one you used. Again, you can customize whatever strategies you use inside of the setup page. For direction, select long because it was a long trade. For the trade size, it's expressed as lot sizes. We explain how to enter sizing correctly in our instruction page. Next, you enter the entry price. Enter the stop-loss price. Enter your takerit.

Enter the trade fees. You should then add your entry reason here. So, for this specific trade, we'll add pattern break entry and then add additional notes bullish Bitcoin correlation. Then once we scroll to the right, your position setup and risk model section will automatically fill based on what you just entered. Next, we fill out the closed position section, which is how the trade actually closed out for you. For the exit type, we select trailing stop-loss.

Again, you can fully customize the exit types you use inside of the setup page. Then once we scroll more to the right, the trade outcome and performance summary will automatically fill. Next, the final section which is the post trade review. Select your emotion during this trade. So we select confident. Again, you can fully customize the emotions you use inside of the setup page. Then select the level of confidence out of five stars.

Then select how disciplined you were during this trade out of five stars. You should also add some post-trade notes here. Correlations equals confidence. Let's jump back to the charts and add more trades. Let's say you are only looking for pullback and retracement trades and only want to trade forex at this moment. This is the dollar yen currency pair 4hour time frame. You notice a moving uptrend before price starts to pull back and retrace.

Price reaches the zone and forms a bullish green candle presenting a long trade setup trend line placed above and once it broke it signals a continuation of the larger uptrend. So you decide to apply your own pullback and retracement strategy and decide to enter here. Stop loss placed here. Profit target placed here at the key level as you're worried price could hit it and reverse back down. Price then moved up, hit your profit target, and you closed the position out for a profit.

Your emotional state during this trade was disciplined as you followed all your rules and were conservative with this trade. Let's now jump back to the journal and log this winning trade. Fill out everything again based on the trade you took. Select forex dollar yen forex account pullback retracement strategy. And for sizing, our spreadsheet automatically calculates the sizing for regular pairs versus yen cross pairs.

So no need to stress. Exit type target price hit. Emotion disciplined. Now that we've covered how to log trades, let's go to the trading dashboard. The dashboard is where the magic happens. It compiles and aggregates everything you inputed in the trading log and presents it in highquality usable data that you can use to make changes to your trading process for explosive improvements. This here is the strategy analytics.

It shows you which strategies have been performing the best overall and which ones have been performing the worst overall. So what you do is you focus more of your effort on the strategies that have been working for you and then remove the ones that haven't been as successful. Without being able to visualize this, it would be impossible for you to make changes and improvements. This is your emotional score overall. So roughly half the time you're calm and focused and then the other half you're frustrated, meaning you need to work on bringing down your frustration by referencing your trade mistakes, which we will be getting into next.

This section shows you what asset classes you trade the best. So in this case, you want to focus more on Forex as you've been doing the best with this asset class. This here shows you whether you do better long trading versus short trading. This section shows you what exit types have been performing the best for you. This here tells you what time of day that you traded performed the best, but also your best and worst hold durations of positions, meaning how long you held the trade on average that worked the best.

Here is the overall performance snapshot. The risk management section shows you what riskreward has worked best for you. Now, what we are showing you on this dashboard is just a simple summary. As you can tell, there's a lot of other data and numbers given here. With this journal, we include a step-by-step walkthrough guide explaining how to use and interpret all the data and numbers here so that you can effectively make insane improvements to your trading.

Let's now get into how to journal and log your trading mistakes. Click the trade mistakes log at the bottom here. All your losses that you entered in the trading log will automatically appear here in the trade mistakes section. So let's jump to the charts and find some trade mistake setups to add. This is the pound CAD currency pair. You spot this key level and decide to take a long instantly right on this red longweight candle here.

It fails and price hits your stop loss. The mistake you made is that you didn't wait for a breakout confirmation, meaning you entered too early. First, you want to enter the trade in your trading log. And since it was a loss, when you jump to the trade mistake page, it will automatically appear here. Since it was a loss, you would then add your mistake type. Entered too early. Add a note for the lesson learned. Be more patient.

Follow your rules. Now, when we jump to the dashboard, you look at the mistakes section and it tells you which mistake has occurred the most. You would then actively make adjustments to stop making those same mistakes over and over again. Seeing it in front of you hits you like a brick and is what is required for people to actually take drastic action and make real changes. Let's now get into how to customize the journal to your specific style of trading.

Click the setup page at the bottom here. On this page, the journal is fully customizable to your likings as a trader. You can add, remove, and name your own strategies here. Let's say you find a new strategy online and you want to test it. Let's take the super trend indicator for example. Go to your strategies input section and type it in. Then let's say you want to add a new exit type such as trend line break. So, you type it in under the exit section.

You then decide you want to add a new emotion such as distracted, so you type it in under the emotion section. Let's say you want to add a new mistake type such as trend exhaustion, so you type it in under the mistakes section. You then want to add a new forex asset such as the Euro CAD. So you type it in under the assets section. These new additions will then be selectable drop-own options during your trading log process and then be automatically added to the trading dashboard.

Let's now jump back to the charts and test this new strategy and additions you just added. This is the Euro CAD 1hour time frame. This is the super trend indicator and it acts as support in uptrends and resistance in downtrends. You have this minor key level here. Price pulls back and touches the key level and touches the bottom of the super trend indicator which presents a long trade setup. Price moves up and you're in profit.

You place a trend line below the new uptrend and once it broke, you closed out the trade for a profit. Your emotional state during this trade was distracted because you were busy with other work. So let's log this trade using the new additions we added previously. Add your usual data first. Then when you select strategy, the new super trend one you added appears as an option. Under exit type, the new trend line break you added appears as an option.

Then under emotion, the new distracted you added appears as an option. Now, when you jump to the dashboard, you'll see the new additions automatically added. Notice how the super trend indicator appears on the strategies section. For the emotional score, the distracted emotion is added. For exit type, the trend line break is added. Let's jump back to the charts and show a losing trade using the same strategy. This is the Aussie dollar 1-hour time frame. price pulls back and touches the bottom of the super trend indicator which presents a long trade setup.

The trade fails and you take a loss. You believe the reason for this loss is because this isn't a deep pullback. You are also at the top of the range and most importantly the trend is exhausted. Again, you log this trade. Then when you go back to the dashboard under the mistakes section, the trend exhaustion will automatically appear. Now, the most important part, what is the actual psychology behind trade journaling?

There are a ton of winning strategies, but here's the thing. Two people using the same winning strategy can result in drastically different results. The reason for this is because everyone's personality and psychology is different. People have different styles of trading, different risk tolerances, emotional differences, mindset differences, the ability to have patience, problems with greed. But overall, everyone is different psychologically, which results in different trading results amongst every trader, even with a winning strategy.

So by journaling you can identify your weaknesses and avoid strategies that play into those weaknesses and then identify your strengths and focus on strategies that maximize your strengths in relation to your overall psychological makeup. If you don't journal and analyze your trades, you will never be a successful trader. You will continue to make the same mistakes over and over again as you're trading blind and just gambling your money away until you give