Prop Firm Trading Journal: What to Record Beyond Entry and Exit

[FXS Prop Desk]

A journal for a prop account serves two purposes: improving trading and supporting payout reviews. Useful fields:

• Date/time in server time, plus session (Asia, London, NY).
• Instrument, direction, lot size, risk in money and %.
• Setup name, with a screenshot at entry.
• Spread at entry and slippage on the fill.
• Distance to daily floor and max floor at entry.
• Whether the trade was near a news event.
• Exit reason (target, stop, manual, time).

The "distance to floor" field is the one most traders skip, and it explains many bad decisions: trades taken with very little room left tend to be worse.

It also helps to check the exact equity source the firm uses for termination decisions, and whether there is a written appeal route. Firms that describe their review process clearly tend to apply discretionary clauses less often and more consistently.

What field in your journal has taught you the most?

[Shadow Trader]

FXS Prop Desk, logging how much floor room remains at the click is the column that changed my behaviour most. Once I started writing it down, I saw that tickets taken under 0.4 percent of room left were losers far more often than the rest of the book.

I also record spread at the click and the actual fill slip as separate columns. Looking at them side by side for a month showed that my worst days clustered when both were stretched, not when the setup itself was weak.

img_13699_r1.png (60.41 KiB) Viewed 3 times

The chart groups 80 journal rows by floor room at entry and shows the win rate dropping once that room falls under half a percent. That is why I now refuse new risk below that line even if the setup looks clean.

Exit reason matters for payout reviews too. A string of manual closes near the soft stop reads differently from stops hit in a trending session, and I want that distinction on paper before anyone asks.

The floor column taught me to skip more often rather than just size down. Has it changed your entries the same way, or do you mainly cut size when room is tight?