7. The Journal

Your tradebook records every trade you made. It cannot record why you made it. The Journal is where you write that down: a note against each trade, in your own words, made close to the time.

A single note helps you remember one decision. A series of them, kept over months, becomes a record of how you go about building your positions, and that record is what you return to when you look back.

We met the Journal briefly in section 2.3. In this chapter, we cover:

• the queue of trades waiting for a note,
• the study desk, where a note is written with the trade in front of you,
• and hashtags and follow-ups, for finding and adding to notes later.

note

Most of this chapter happens on the Journal page. A note can also be written from an opened position, on Current Positions or Past Positions, in its Journal column. It is the same note either way.

Let's start with the queue.