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Writing the spread at entry into your journal

Most journals record entry, stop, target, result. Few record the spread at the moment of entry, and it's one of the easiest numbers to add.

Why it matters. A scalp with an eight pip stop and a one pip spread is paying an eighth of its risk just to get in. The same scalp entered when the spread was two and a half pips is paying almost a third. Those are different trades, even if everything else looks the same.

Over a few months, the spread column lets you answer questions you can't answer otherwise. Do your losing trades tend to have higher spreads at entry? Are there times of day when you regularly enter at poor spreads without noticing? Does one pair cost you far more than you thought?

Getting the number is simple. Note the spread shown on the platform when you click, or take it from a screenshot. Some platforms let you add the spread to the trade comment automatically through a small script.

It also helps to record the spread as a fraction of the stop, not just in pips. That ratio is what actually tells you how much of the trade's risk went to cost.

If you journal in a spreadsheet, a formula can calculate the ratio from the spread and stop columns automatically.

A spread column is easy to add and tells a lot. Logging the time next to it helps make sense of it later. On most feeds the expensive entries cluster in the first minutes after 08:00 London, around 13:30 on US data days, and near the New York close. If losing trades show higher spreads at entry, the fix may simply be a rule such as no entries until the spread is back under a set level, rather than any change to the setup itself.

With an EA or a trade manager tool, adding the spread to the order comment is usually a one line change. The comment then appears in the trade history and in most exported statements, so it ends up in your journal without any extra typing. That's more reliable than writing it by hand, since manual numbers are easy to skip when trades come quickly. An automatic record also captures the spread at the exact moment of the order, rather than a few seconds later when you remember to look at it and the spread has already changed.

Comparing spread at entry with spread at exit adds another piece. Exits during fast moves or near news often happen at a wider spread than entries, and that extra cost doesn't show up if you only record one number. A trade can look like it made the target cleanly when in fact the exit spread took a meaningful share of the profit. Recording both gives the full cost of the trade. Most traders find the exit number surprises them more than the entry, since exits are less planned and often happen at worse moments in the session. If exit spreads are regularly far above entry spreads, that's a reason to look at how and when you exit, not only at entry timing. Taking profit with a limit order rather than closing at market is one way to reduce it.

Spread data from your journal can also check your broker's claims. If the broker advertises an average spread on a pair, and your recorded entry spreads are consistently above it at the times you trade, that's useful information. It doesn't mean the broker is lying. Advertised averages often cover the most liquid hours only. But it tells you what you're actually paying for the way you trade, which is the number that should drive any decision about switching account types or brokers, rather than the brochure figure. Comparing your numbers with the advertised figures once a quarter is enough to notice changes.

Grouping trades by spread bucket can show whether you need a filter. Split the trades into groups, such as spread under one pip, one to two, and above two. Compare the results in each group. If the high spread trades are clearly worse, a simple rule to not enter above a certain spread might improve your results without changing anything else in the strategy. That's one of the cheapest improvements available, since it doesn't require learning anything new, just declining trades at moments when they're more expensive. Run the comparison on at least a couple of hundred trades so a few bad fills don't distort the buckets.

Fairman wrote:Run the comparison on at least a couple of hundred trades so a few bad fills don't distort the buckets.

Fair play Fairman, the buckets idea makes sense, but im not so sure about a couple of hundred trades being enough imo. Once you split it three ways you might only have 40 or 50 in the wierd top bucket, and a few lucky winners could easily flip it. Id probably log alot longer before binning any entries, tbh... or at least treat it as a hunch until the numbers settle

gwhitlock64 wrote: Thu Oct 29, 2026 5:25 pm

Fairman wrote:Run the comparison on at least a couple of hundred trades so a few bad fills don't distort the buckets.

Fair play Fairman, the buckets idea makes sense, but im not so sure about a couple of hundred trades being enough imo. Once you split it three ways you might only have 40 or 50 in the wierd top bucket, and a few lucky winners could easily flip it. Id probably log alot longer before binning any entries, tbh... or at least treat it as a hunch until the numbers settle

Yeah, i agree too, you will need more than 200 trades in my point of view as well.

This is one of the simplest and most informative journal additions. The example of a one-pip spread on an eight-pip stop makes the point clearly. It could also be extended into a rule: a maximum spread as a fraction of the stop, above which the trade is skipped. After a few weeks of data, the journal would show whether trades entered at wider spreads really performed worse, and the threshold could be set from the evidence rather than a guess.

A trade that lasts forty seconds does not leave room for a long write-up, and most of the usual journal fields add nothing. A shorter list tends to capture the useful part:

- Time to the second, not just the minute. Spread and liquidity can change a lot inside one minute around releases or the session open.
- Spread at entry and at exit, since on a small target this is often a large part of the result.
- Fill price versus the price clicked. The gap, over many trades, is a cost of its own.
- The trigger in a few words, so that later it is clear whether the entry matched the rule or was improvised.
- State at the moment of entry, in one word: calm, rushed, bored, annoyed. That single word often explains more than the chart does.
- A screenshot taken at entry, not afterwards, because afterwards the chart already knows the answer.

What is not worth recording is a long explanation of why the trade should have worked. That gets written after the outcome is known and mostly reflects hindsight.

A short voice note or a quick tagged row is usually all it takes to keep the habit alive. Anything that takes longer than the trade itself tends to be abandoned within a week.

Which of these fields has turned out to be the most revealing, and is there anything else worth tracking on very short trades?