How to Keep and Review a Trading Journal

How to keep a trading journal that actually changes results: the nine fields that matter, the one column most journals leave out, how to export your history from MT5, and a weekly review that takes twenty minutes.

A trading journal is a record of every trade and, more importantly, of whether each one followed the plan. Kept properly it is the only reliable source of two numbers no strategy works without — your win rate and your rule compliance — and the only way to find out which of your losses were the market's fault.

Key Takeaways

• Record the plan and the execution, not just the result. The gap between them is where the money goes.
• Nine fields are enough. One of them — "followed the plan?" — is the one most journals omit and the one that matters most.
• MT5 exports your account history; the journal adds what the export cannot know.
• Review weekly, twenty minutes, looking for patterns rather than individual trades.

What to Record

The R column deserves a note. A trade that risked $50 and made $100 is +2R; one that risked $50 and lost $75 because the stop was moved is −1.5R. Expressed this way, a month of trades becomes a distribution, and the risk-to-reward ratio and win rate fall out of it directly.

Exporting from MT5

In the Toolbox, open the History tab, set the period, right-click and choose Report to export closed trades. The export gives dates, prices, sizes, swap, commission and result. It does not give the plan, the reason for a manual exit, or whether the rules were followed; those are the fields you add.

Worked Example: What a Month Shows

Twenty trades, $50 planned risk each.

Read as a whole: a slightly profitable month. Read by the compliance column: the fifteen plan-following trades made +$440; the five plan-breaking trades lost $355. The strategy is working. The trader is the leak — and the journal has identified which rule, how often, and what it cost.

(Illustrative.)

The Weekly Review

Twenty minutes, same day each week:

1. Compliance rate. Trades that followed the plan ÷ total. Below 90% is the first problem to fix, before anything about the strategy.
2. Which rule breaks most. Moved stop, early exit, oversized, late entry. Usually one dominates.
3. What it cost. Sum the R of the broken-rule trades.
4. Conditions. Are the losses clustered in a session, around events, in one instrument?
5. One change. A single rule tightened or a single condition avoided. Not five.

Monthly, the same review over the larger sample, plus win rate and average R by setup.

Why It Matters

Without a journal, the memory of trading is a highlight reel: the good calls remembered, the moved stops forgotten. Confirmation bias edits the record in your favour. A journal is the uneditable version, and it is the only place the difference between "the strategy loses" and "I keep breaking rule 2" can be seen.

Is a spreadsheet enough?

Yes. Nine columns and a weekly filter is all it takes. Software adds charts; it does not add the compliance column.

How long before the journal is useful?

A few dozen trades for the compliance pattern to appear; more for win rate by setup to mean anything.

Should I journal demo trades?

Yes — the habit is the point, and demo is where it costs nothing to build. See demo vs live accounts.

What if I have not been journaling?

Export the MT5 history for the last period, add the compliance column from memory as honestly as you can, and start properly from the next trade. The next month matters more than the last.

What is "R"?

Result divided by the planned risk. +2R means twice the planned risk was made; −1R means exactly the planned risk was lost.

Related Reading

Trading psychology: how emotions affect decisions · Position sizing · Risk-to-reward ratio · Revenge trading · Trading risk management plan