Thread by @Crypto_C00kie

If you're trading but not journaling your trades, how will you ever be able to improve yourself/your trading? You can't. I don't even care where you log them; a piece of software, an Excel/Google sheet or even a (analog) notepad. Here's a look at my template for inspiration.

Notice that big yellow box on the top? It's the most important part of my journal because that's where I look back at what happened in the trade overview below it. I use it as a running diary of dumb things that I might've done during the month.

My trade overview is a simple list of entry, initial stop loss and exit price from which some additional statistics are calculated, namely R, W/L ratio and profit percentages. R is a simple enough calculation: entry price - initial stop loss. It shows the risk for that trade.

Expressing profit/loss in R means you have an abstract unit that isn't Bitcoin or USDT or whatever base pair you're trading to compare your trades to one another. You should never ever lose more than 1R (1.1R max due to slippage) on a trade.

If you are losing more than 1R on a trade, you're moving your stops around and not sticking to your initial plan. It means you're only kidding yourself by doing so and feeling the consequences of that by accepting a bigger loss.

Each trade has a dedicated area for possible improvements. Didn't move your stop up in time? Write it down there. Did it start to pump and you got greedy and didn't get out on the pump? That's where that goes. Document why that trade did/didn't work out.

I've also dedicated a large part of that sheet to MAE and MFE, courtesy of @IchimokuScholar. MAE is the lowest price the asset had during your trade, which is your max drawdown. MFE is the highest price it reached, which would be your max profit. But how does that help you? 🤔

If your average MFE % is significantly better than the average profit % of your trades, then you are probably leaving too much profits on the table. This is a sign you could experiment with moving up your stops into profit more.

The MFE stat can also help when analysing losing trades. Imagine that the average MFER on your losing trades that month is 1R. This means that on quite a few of those trades you could have had a nice profit, but for some reason, you took a loss. Why was that? Worth looking into.

I already mentioned that if your average MAER is more than -1R you're moving your stops. If your MAER on winning trades is frequently less than 1R you can consider tightening up your stop loss. It means your drawdown is minimal & you could tighten your stops to increase returns.

Here's a subsection of the trades I've logged for June. All of which show some of the concepts outlined in this thread. Obviously basic risk management / position sizing applies to all of these trades, minimising any losses.

I'll see if I can share the sheet if there are people that are interested in it. It's currently on my personal Google account, so need to figure out how to move it elsewhere to not dox the shit out of myself.