Journal column I added this month: 'would I take this again?'

[FXS London Scalper]

A small change to a trade journal that can be more useful than expected: after each trade, fill in one extra column: would I take this exact trade again, yes or no, ignoring the result.

After 100 or more trades, compare the two groups:

• What share of trades are a yes.
• Expectancy of the yes trades.
• Expectancy of the no trades, including the ones that won.

If the no trades come out negative while the yes trades are positive, the column is doing its job.

The point is that it separates decision quality from outcome. A losing trade I'd take again doesn't need fixing. A winning trade I wouldn't take again is a warning, because it rewards the habit I want to remove.

Filling it in right after closing is a weakness, because the result colours the answer. An alternative is to fill it in at entry, then again after closing, and see how often the opinion changes.

Does anyone use a similar decision-quality column? I'd be interested in how you stop the outcome from leaking into the rating.

[Amanhasnoname]

I have been using something very close to this since spring, and the leak you mention was real for me. When I filled it in after closing, almost every winner became a yes. Out of the first eighty trades I rated only three winners as a no, which obviously says more about my mood than the trades.

What fixed most of it was rating at entry with a score from one to three instead of yes or no, then writing the closing rating without looking at the first one. I compare the two once a week. About one trade in five changes rating after the result is known, and those are mostly losers I downgraded because they hurt, not because the decision was poor.

The most useful output for me has been the group of entries I scored a one at entry. Over a few months they were slightly negative even including their winners, and they made up almost a quarter of my trades. Simply skipping anything I would score a one has done more for my results than any change to the actual setup.