How to Make a Trading Journal Spreadsheet in Excel

Economy Accountancy. It’s actually one of the most difficult class subjects when I was still in Senior High School. There were two majors back then, Social and Science. I took the Social major, which includes Geography, Economy Accountancy, and History. Well, I had some harsh days because of the Accountancy subject. However, it was simple stuff for your own personal use, like counting your income and expenses. How about the Trading Journal? I can say that it will be much more difficult than for personal use, but I managed to find the way to make a trading journal spreadsheet. So, because of that, in this article, let’s make a spreadsheet of trading journals.

Definition of Trading Journal

So, what exactly is a Trading Journal? Well, Trading Journal is actually an arranged record about all of the trades that you take in the market. Well, it consists of a lot of entries. These entries are taken from different or separated kind of trades

Keeping yourself a Trading Journal

Well, for a trader, it is necessary to have a trading journal. A Trading Journal can provide you some overviews about the wares or trades in the market. In other words, you can overview the entry, the exit prices, directions of the trade, size position, and the result. It also includes some necessary information that may be useful for you in the future.

By keeping yourself a trading journal, you can spot which one can give you more profits and which is not. From that, you can change the strategy of your trade marketing.

Elements of Trading Journal

1. Date & Time – In the trading journal entries, keeping the date and time of every trade is necessary. You should arrange based on the date, so you can conclude the exact condition of your trades at the end of the month.
2. Traded Instrument – In this one, it described your instruments that have been traded. You may want to include the market too, so filtering this stuff will be much simpler.
3. Trade Direction – This entry is about the buy or sell.
4. Entry & Exit Prices – There are three different columns. They are the entry price, the stop-loss level, and the take-profit level.
5. Position Size – It is necessary to take Position Size for every trade you made. Because of this entry, you can determine if you are in risk management or not.
6. Result of Trade – This one is the last, and that is about the result of your trades. You can put whatever it is a profit or a loss.

Making the Spreadsheet

How do you make a trading journal spreadsheet in Excel? Well, there are 9 columns that you need to make first. Well, they are based on the elements above. They are (I also include the example of the content to write below the Columns):

Date: 12 Sep
Market: FOREX
Instrument: USD
Direction: Buy
Entry Price: 1.16
Stop Loss: 1.15
Take Profit: 1.17
Position Size: 0.5
Result: Profit/Loss

You can also add additional columns, such as the Commentaries & Reasons and Chart. However, these ones are optional. You can include it or not, but it is your choice. In short you can customize the spreadsheet downloads based on your needs.

Summary

As a summary, making a trading journal spreadsheet is easy and simple. However, it is quite difficult if you do not know how to start. Well, I was talking about counting up every entry in the journal. You can search the download link to the spreadsheet where you can use the template or not.