Journaling is something that is always discussed, brought up, but its practice looks different for a lot of people. I am one of those people. I have a nuanced view on this topic.
My viewpoint on journaling and recapping is personal to me. The outcome of adding anything to your process will always be dependent on what you make of it. If you consider it valuable, it will be valuable. If you do not value it, it won’t provide value to you. This is how many things work in trading. What you make of it will always be what you get from it.
Trading scrambles your memory. You are able to remember the winners and the big winners, not the two dumb trades you took that you didn’t think mattered. You remember the risk you meant to take, not the size you actually put on. The mirror exists to fix that gap.
It's not a diary and it’s not a therapy session/lecture. Instead, I like to write out what important events occurred in the markets. If you do it right, it takes ten minutes a day, twenty minutes on Sunday, and under an hour once a month. the rest of the time you trade. Do not assume you can remember it all. We are aided with super computers in your pockets. It is best if we use them.
Jot down all the important information from the day/week. Break down the effects, causes, possible solutions, ramifications. Then, try to make sense of it all. Sometimes, it doesn’t all make sense. You are going to need to see more data, more numbers, more points to base your conclusion and case on. This is the point where trading becomes a science. Think like a scientist here. What is happening? Why is it happening? What does changing X do to Y?
The mirror has three jobs. First, refine your edge. That means capturing enough context to see patterns. Examples here are setups that pay, external or internal factors that impact you, times of day that you perform well during.
Second, regulate emotion. Writing down size, window, and emotions creates something you can act on. If a position is hijacking you, the journal makes you see it and size down. If the market is hindering your opportunities to catch longer bigger moves, what does that do to your focus on XYZ firm?
Third, tell the truth about performance. PNL l goes in the journal, but it doesn’t lead the page. Behavior and emotions do. When you put behavior first and dollars last, you train yourself to protect the process that actually produces dollars.
Most journals I see fail for simple reasons. Either they don’t include the context/emotions/decision making process behind them, or they turn into story time. I’ve seen paragraphs about trading emotions/feelings with no decision at the end. I’ve seen people who only journal good days or good performances.
I really believe that within markets/trading/props you really have to think about it. and think deeply about it. What are your bets? How do your bets win? How do your bets lose? What does my past performance or my current performance do to impact those bets?
This opens the can of worms question of ideation vs iteration. Coming up with ideas and trades is important but also is executing upon them. How do you allocate your time and focus between these 2 things? Are you spending all of your time executing to where you can not think about adapting your current bets or improving the baseline? This is a higher level question that I always like to ask not only myself but others?
Time and energy are a fixed resource. Reflecting and understanding honestly how you allocate this across the board is important for generating returns. In a prop related context, this could be spending all of your time and energy focused on charts and execution and no time into understanding what firms/rules you are trading and how to best optimize your bet. (different bets require different expressions of trades.) If you put yourself in the “business shoes”, how is the business doing in regards to its bankroll and cashflow? What is the treasury strategy? If you don’t give this a thought, then you could possibly be “leaking.” (in reference to, limiting returns)
I think a lot of traders underestimate the power of explaining their thought process or reasoning behind a position or trade. Have you ever asked someone why they took XYZ position or trade and they couldn’t give you an answer? You should be able to defend your trades. Present them to others. In a more formal setting, you write up an investment thesis. You bring it to the investment committee or ‘PM’ and have to present it. You have to be able to sell them on why you think they should put on XYZ trade. If you can’t defend it and others can poke holes through the thesis, it doesn’t get put on. Your thinking and process should be similar. Perhaps, this mostly occurs on longer timelines and timeframes, but it could also happen intraday. This is all apart of rational thinking.
Weekends and Sundays are for sorting and iterating. twenty minutes. skim the week and put trades in three buckets: keep, cut, adjust. I don’t want to get too deep into strategies for managing a portfolio. But here are the basics. Go thru the things that are going to set you up for success next week. Is that rebalancing or redirecting focus to this or that piece of your “portfolio”?
Once a month, look for drift. if your best “trade” went net negative for three weeks, or your cashflow dropped, make adjustments. Honesty and humility are needed here. Don’t allow yourself to get blinded. Take off the “mask” and look in the mirror. You know where you mess up.
I’ve intentionally tried to keep this chapter more vague than others. Because journaling is something that applies to a wide variety of aspects in trading and markets. There is no one right approach. Again, it is a science. But it can be something very powerful for running a business in this game. This game is always changing and adapting. You can’t possibly keep track of it all. How you allocate your resources to the changing game is what matters. Try to take your emotions out of the picture. Act as a “risk allocator”.
Journal your best trades and your worst trades. You should be able to point at what worked on your best trades and what failed you on your worst trades. Look for patterns in your winners. What do you winners (and big winners) look like specifically? Where do your best trades come from? Conversely, you can ask the opposite question. Where do my worst trades come from? What conditions do I not perform well under? There has to be an equal appreciation to both the winners and losers. Treat them the same. Break them down and learn from them.
A journal you’ll USE is MORE IMPORTANT than a journal that looks good. pen and paper works. a private discord channel with yourself works. apple notes or notion. pick one and be consistent !
There are a few prop-specific things worth logging so the journal stays useful under prop firm rules. write your remaining buffer at the start and end of the day. If your consistency rule gives you a daily cap, write the number on the page. log giveback as a percent of cycle profit. We talked a lot more in previous chapters of all the possible things to include here.
Pattern recognition in this industry is invaluable. If you are able to spot patterns, and act on them quickly and efficiently, you will win in this game. Your counterparty doesn’t expect you to be able to put it together. If you are able to put it together, you crack the code. This seems funny or oversimplified. But in reality this is what plays out. Something something quote about how many always transfer to the patience and prepared from the uninformed.
Information is always asymmetric. That’s why I wrote this book. What good does it do for me to take the alpha with me and walk away? It does no good. Instead, I’d rather (hopefully) be a source to get more asymmetric thinking in this game. Always thinking you have perfect information about something is misguided. Every game has levels. That is why the finance industry is so “tailed”. The winners in any industry are the ones who understand it the most. Those who saw NVDA as an AI company not as a gaming company? They won. Those who saw GME as a memestock with squeeze potential not as a bankrupt retailer? They won. It’s perspective and nuanced thinking that wins. It is having a plan and executing on it. It is not allowing good trades or bad trades to overrun your emotions. Truly, it is an art and a science. Beautiful game we get to play.
Here's how this actually looks on a desk. before the open, write two lines: bias and invalidation. choose a window and a time the session ends. pick a size that doesn’t hijack your nervous system—if you feel it in your throat, cut it. during the session, place oco orders at entry so you can’t “clean up later,” and put a time stop on the idea. if price isn’t at target or invalidation by the minute mark, reduce or flatten. if you feel the urge to push a stop, stand up and breathe for a minute and a half before doing anything. if you take a good win near a milestone, lock the day. if you hit your giveback threshold, close the platform and keep the week intact. after the session, write a paragraph: did i keep the window, the risk, and the attempts? did i break a rule? what would have protected me from the worst moment today? that’s the change you run tomorrow. none of this is complicated. it’s only uncomfortable if you measure yourself against someone else’s screenshot instead of your own plan.
i learned this because i didn’t have it, and it cost me. i’ve had months where i started clean, felt momentum, and decided to “earn” an extra push the day before a payout. you know how those stories end. the fix wasn’t a pep talk. it was writing down exactly how i behave within forty-eight hours of a transfer—how i trade, when i stop, what i’m allowed to risk—and then actually living by it even when i felt sharp. the month after i adopted that rule was the first time my equity curve felt heavy in a good way. the wins didn’t look bigger day to day. they just stuck.
survival-first doesn’t mean timid. it means honest. it means knowing that the game is to still be here with good habits when the next rich window arrives. it means building a life around trading that doesn’t destroy the part of you that has to sit still to do it well. if you want one thing to implement tonight, make it small and non-negotiable. write the sentence that ends your session—on time, after the first decent winner near a milestone, or after two losses—and follow it tomorrow no matter how you feel. you can layer in the other pieces as you go: shrink size until you can think; set a giveback limit you will respect; schedule light days before and after payouts; keep one builder and many defenders; close the platform when your window ends. do that long enough and you’ll notice something less dramatic than a big day and more important than any single win: you’ll still be here, calm enough to execute, when it matters.
PART III: BUILD YOUR FRAMEWORK