manual trading journal

last year i had started a trading log/ journal kind of thing on traderji , which i later stopped because i had realized a journal keeping online wasn't working great for me .

i am now whole heartedly prepared to keep a manual journal , in which all trades which are taken will be printed and their reason and method will be written on it .

however i am a bit confused as how this is gonna work , because a small chart is not very nice to have printed , i think the chart needs to be large enough , full A4 size ..............but then how am i going to write stuff on same page ? and because all trades will be journal entries a 2nd page just to write about trade will not be fruitful and will become cumbersome after sometime .

what is the solution to it guys?

As you would be doing the Charting on a Computer, how about keeping the Journal in MS WORD file !
Easier to handle and maintain I suppose !

Do the first screen shot of it with PicPick and save that one on the desktop. Open it with Picture manager and zoom it as much as you can, but still see the whole picture on the desktop. Now make an other screen shoot of that and save it again on the desktop. Now you open it with paint and do write on it what ever you wish. After you print it on A4 and that should do the job. This is just one idea how to do it.

how about a blog like nifty nirvana?
http://niftynirvana.blogspot.in/

Writing essays on chart is okay but not very pretty and easy on eyes.
Marking the points and having an explanation in text will be great.

More standard the chart markup (eg: nifty nirvana uses well known acronyms like PDH, BOF, PB, LOD, HOD etc.) better it's to read and digest.

You can even automate adding blog entries using some free desktop blog publishing tool with a single push button (instead of login/edit/save cycle).
If you are on windows 7 you already have windows live writer for this job! occasionally throw in a summary here in TJ thread.

Hi
I have started maintaining a journal.
I make all entries in excel sheets and mark the entries on charts.
I use Sharex (http://getsharex.com/) to take screenshots for my charts and then put hyperlinks for these charts in same excel sheets so that all trade information can be checked from the same excel sheet.

Regards
Manoj

@rkkarnani and @onlinegtrash and others

however your suggestions are useful , but i have realized that only manual journal would work for me , yes it is old fashioned and cumbersome , but human mind is a very tricky thing.............reading something or typing something requires different part of the brain , but writing something with hand on chart requires a very different part of the brain altogether ...............it imprints experience and learning more forcefully in the brain .

the tv and the computer are designed to play with human mind and it wont serve the right purpose for me .................so as of now i am inclined to manual journal only , even if its more cumbersome , even typing with keyboard doesn't imprints the way writing does ................and its the matter of my trading which is my living and not my entertainment , the more it imprints in the mind ,the better

however i will also use excel sheets and spreadsheets for reflecting on my progress at a later stage ,but that will be an addition to manual journal only , journal is forever to stay now .

@manojborle

please if you dont mind share your exact method of how you use excel sheet to log your entries , if possible share the sheet as well :thumb:

These are sheets where I log down my trades and in other workbook (where individual trade is logged) I am planning to put hyperlinks for my charts.

Regards

Manoj

Please Note I got this idea from " A trader's Money Management" by Mcdowell

Look forward to seeing your 'scanned' trade journal in not too distant a future !

>>however your suggestions are useful , but i have realized that only manual journal would work for me , yes it is old fashioned and cumbersome , but human mind is a very tricky

@toocool,

You are very right! I have always felt this, paper and pen beats all digital toys when note making and when thinking aloud with paper and pen. May be its because writing comes 100 times more natural than typing, writing is way more unstructured and free flowing than a blinking cursor. Annotating with hands on a paper makes a writers soul smile but a paintbrush software fails there despite making a perfect digital annotation! If typing in computer is like moving train with fixed speed, writing on paper is like a bird flying all over the place where it pleases with freedom and ease!

I prefer digital toys only because of their few formidable qualities:
a) searching and sorting
b) categorizing
c) saving and sharing

When the requirement is scientific documentation with serious number crunching (that involves higher math, statistics and plots) tools like ipython notebook shines but still if one wants to think aloud paper and pen beats ipython notebooks too! This shows something interesting creative essence is not exactly in number crunching or fast computing or data storage and retrieval but with slow computing fragile human mind with imagination to connect the dots!