REVIEW THE DECISION
A trading journal should audit decisions, not decorate P&L.
A useful journal preserves what was knowable at decision time. It records the plan, the evidence seen, the action taken and any deviation before the final result can rewrite the story.
Before you begin
Prerequisites
Learning objectives
- Explain: Capture the pre-trade state
- Explain: Separate execution from outcome
- Explain: Review in batches
Capture the pre-trade state
Record timestamp, market context, setup, planned risk, invalidation, size and supporting screenshot before entry. A later explanation cannot substitute for a contemporaneous record.
Separate execution from outcome
Score whether the trade followed the plan independently from whether it made money. A planned loss can be good execution; an unplanned profit can still be a process failure.
- Plan followed or deviation identified
- Fill, cost and alert differences recorded
- Emotional or operational interruption described
- No new rule created from one outcome
Review in batches
Review a defined group of trades by setup and market condition. Look for repeated deviations, cost drift and invalidation failures before proposing any rule change.
Common mistakes
- Reading the result without the stated scope and assumptions.
- Changing the rule after seeing an outcome while still calling the data unseen evidence.
Trader Checklist
- Plan followed or deviation identified
- Fill, cost and alert differences recorded
- Emotional or operational interruption described
- No new rule created from one outcome
Practice exercise
Choose one of your own trading examples and write one page of rules, evidence and stopping conditions using the principles in "A trading journal should audit decisions, not decorate P&L.".
What evidence would overturn the conclusion
The conclusion should be overturned or narrowed if a key assumption cannot be reproduced inside the supported scope, the control cannot be executed, or new out-of-sample evidence repeatedly contradicts it.