Record Your Trades!
It's vital to success
Welcome to this Quant Wisdom Wednesday! Today, I’ll address an essential question from our community about recording trades and why it’s critical for every trader. Effective trade recording is more than a habit; it’s the foundation for identifying strengths and improving over time. In this guide, I'll walk through what data to capture and offer a few practical tools to simplify the process.
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Why You Should Record Your Trades
Recording your trades provides you with your own personalized dataset, invaluable for tracking performance, refining strategies, and maintaining trading discipline. It takes only a few minutes each day, but it can significantly impact your results.
Essential Trade Data to Record
Here’s a breakdown of the must-have details:
Entry and Exit Points: Capture the date, time, price, and quantity.
Reasons for Entry and Exit: Note your setup or system (e.g., trend-following, mean reversion).
Tagging: Label each trade by strategy. This allows you to sort trades and pinpoint which approaches work best.
Consider using TraderView (link in the description) or an Excel spreadsheet. Tools like TraderView enable quick imports from brokers and automate data analysis, while spreadsheets provide flexibility for custom tagging and tracking.
Advanced Metrics for Deeper Insights
If you’re comfortable with tracking more data, add metrics like:
MAE/MFE (Maximum Adverse/Maximum Favorable Excursion): This measures how far a trade moved in your favor or against you, offering insight into potential missed profits or excessive risks.
Journaling Notes: Record thoughts about each trade and market conditions to capture your decision-making process.
Tools and Resources
TraderView offers extensive automated tracking and analytics to save time.
Excel or Google Sheets provide free, customizable options for those who prefer manual input.
If you're interested in a more structured approach, join StatsEdge Pro to access additional insights, strategies, and our members-only Discord alert bot.
Start recording your trades today—improve your trading with data-backed insights! For more tools and tutorials, head to StatsEdgeTrading.com.