How to Journal Your Trades

Start here, because it fixes almost everything else. George opens his trade journal first thing and keeps it up through the entire session. He treats it like a cockpit instrument.

Why does this matter so much? Because the alternative fails every single time. Reconstruct a whole day of trades from memory at the close and you lose the details that actually teach you something. George says it flat out… “Don’t rely on journaling at the end of the day. You really want to do it throughout” (May 26, 2025). Journaling while you trade is the best practice, full stop.

The same rule applies to your Battle Plan reviews. Wait until the session ends and the pile is too big to face. Handle each mapped trade as it plays out and the work stays small.

Take notes on each session as you live it. AM session notes during the AM session. Lunch notes at lunch. Skip the sessions you sat out. That way the record writes itself, one small piece at a time, and the end of your trading day stays clean. This is the backbone of a real daily trading routine.

Now the hard part. The discipline. George calls journaling the toughest habit to build in a trader, and he pleads with people to do it anyway.

Every trade gets logged. Every day gets an entry. No exceptions, no gaps in the streak. “Make sure you are journaling every single day” (May 6, 2025). A streak counter that tracks your run helps cement the habit, so the number itself becomes a reason to show up.

What about a day you never fired a trade? You still journal. Log a full entry for the pure habit, or drop a quick note that reads “no trade day.” The point is the reps.

Clean tools kill the last excuse. With a fast annotation workflow the chart stays uncluttered and the entry takes a couple of minutes. George’s own words on his Chart Buddy tool… “The chart is clean, only takes a few minutes. I no longer have an excuse to not document my trades” (May 29, 2026). If you need convincing on the why behind all of it, start with Why Every Futures Trader Needs a Trading Journal.

A complete entry tells the whole story of the trade. Screenshot, entry, exit, stop moves, the setup you were playing, a self-grade, and the emotion you felt. Here is the anatomy George builds on every logged trade.

Annotating the chart carries the most weight. Mark where you entered, where you took profit, and every place your stop moved. George narrates it as he does it… “I had my stop here. Then I had my stop here. Then I had my stop here. I’ll be annotating for my journal” (May 12, 2026). Even if you never type a word, chart-journal. Mark it up, save it to your folder, review your entries and stops against price action.

Tag every trade honestly, including the discretionary ones you took off-plan. A tag like “discretionary” plus a short note and a screenshot keeps the record truthful. George logs his own that way… “MES long… notes discretionary price action trade. Took a six-point stop loss. I would have taken that trade again” (Jun 21, 2026). Grade the discipline, note the points, and you own a review you can trust.

Feelings belong in the record too. When an emotion hits mid-trade, capture it right then. “Trader wisdom… feel something, write it down. You’ll thank yourself later” (May 28, 2026). That live emotion note becomes gold when you study why you break your own rules.

The screenshot is the heart of a chart journal. Set it up so the images are ready the moment you need them. George automates his… chart and DOM captured behind the scenes on every trade, dropped straight into his folder.

Capture the chart with your levels and Battle Plan setups visible. Then you can look back and see exactly why you pulled the trigger… “if I have any levels here of why I took a trade or if I have my Battle Plan trade setting here, I know exactly why I took that trade” (Sep 20, 2025).

One trade can spit out ten or fifteen screenshots. Do not dump them all into the journal. Pick the single frame that tells the story best and log that one. And annotate your screenshots with notes and a date using the text tool, so the image still means something months later. Label your levels on the chart too. George marks the “tariff tweet low” as a note precisely because it looked unimportant at the time… later, that context is priceless.

Quick counts as complete. A journal entry does not have to be a drawn-out process. A snapshot, where you went long or short, how you managed it, and any lessons learned… that is a finished entry. When you close out a trade, screenshot it while it is fresh, pull in the relevant levels, and grade it on the spot. This same review muscle powers your End of Day Chart Review.

Here is the one habit almost nobody uses, and it may matter most. Read your journal entries out loud. A written note lives silently in your head. Spoken, it lands differently and sticks harder.

George leans on an old idea here. Augustine said to sing the Psalms is to pray twice. Hearing the word aloud drives retention in a way silent reading never touches… “There’s a lot of benefit in hearing the word… and that’s why you often will hear me suggest reading your journal out loud” (May 30, 2026). Take it a step further and use voice dictation to write the entry, then read it back. “Read your journal entries out loud. It’s going to make a difference in your retention” (May 28, 2026).

This is the payoff for all the logging. You built the record so it could teach you. Speaking it out loud is how the lessons move from the page into your actual trading.

Design your journal so you never want to skip it. George’s first piece of advice on layout runs against instinct: start with the full journal. Live with every field for a while, learn which ones you love and which you never touch, then trim down to a lighter layout.

A few touches keep the habit human and grounded:

• Nest your trade plan at the top. Park your Battle Plan and screenshots at the head of the entry. Mid-trade, when you ask “now what did I say in my trade plan?”, you scroll up and see it. Pair this with How to Write a Trading Plan.
• Open with gratitude. Start each entry with a thankfulness list. Goals and gratitudes keep you grounded, even though they are optional. George’s goal one day: make one trade with a small stop only.
• Color-code your fields. Consistent colors let your brain pick out and organize information faster on review. Green, blue, yellow, gray… the eye sorts them instantly.
• Use a “complete” checkbox. Check a trade complete only once it is entered, exited, and fully logged. An unchecked trade flags itself as unfinished business.
• Mark the important ones. Flag your best lessons as important so they stand out. George marks his hardest-won patience notes that way.

Keep a fast lane for low-friction days too. A quick-and-dirty entry, a lightning-bolt shortcut, still counts on a vacation day or a no-trade day. And when you sat out a setup you should have taken, mentally trade it in the journal anyway. That practice lives in Mental Trading: Learn From the Trades You Didn’t Take.

One last discipline. Set the entry, close the loop, and step away… the same principle behind Close Your Trading Platform.