Journaling Your Emotional State Predicts Your Next Mistake

[Fairman]

Before you even open your first chart for the session, take fifteen seconds to note your current mental state in plain language: tired, anxious, angry, calm, rushed, distracted — whatever genuinely applies. This small step, added consistently to your journal, becomes remarkably predictive over time.

Here's why it works. Most traders assume their losses come primarily from bad setups or unlucky market conditions. When you actually cross-reference logged emotional states against losing trades over a large enough sample, a very different and much more useful pattern often emerges: certain emotional states — "rushed because I started late," "irritated from something unrelated to trading," "overtired" — show up disproportionately often right before the costliest mistakes.

This isn't mystical. It's simply that emotional state affects decision quality, and once you have the data laid out in front of you instead of relying on vague memory, the pattern becomes obvious and specific to you personally — not some generic psychology-book advice, but your own documented tendencies.

Once you know your specific danger states, you can act on that knowledge directly. If you notice you logged "rushed" and then find yourself in that state again mid-session, that's your cue to either slow down deliberately or step away from the platform entirely until the state passes. The journal isn't just recording what happened — it's building an early warning system for what's about to happen.

[PTScalper]

Hi Fairman,

thank you for this post, its interesting.
I hear for first time to taking notes in trading diary about your mental statement, i have never think about it like this.

You are right, that personal mental health and psychology state is very important for trading .. i guess everybody knows from
their own experience, what is like revenge trading etc.
Plus trading it self is not easy and time to time if you will not care about yourself you can have mental breakdown and lost all of your account.

I found out, what works for me:

1.) I do not trade long never ending trading series. Trading series have its start and end.
2.) Once i trade i take everyday like at least every day 10km walk and some day run, or mountain bike.
3.) I live in Spa city. (huge improvment)
4.) I scale my account from profit, not own money. (biggest improvment)

I think, that is important, that you have opened this kind of topic, because internet is full of fake gurus, who presents only partiing, luxury cars and vacations,
but they do not show the hard reality.

And in long run, you have figure it out for yourself, how to handle stress, because it is huge implicator of your future trading success.