The three columns most journals are missing

[Amanhasnoname]

Entry, exit, lot size, result. That is what the average journal holds, and for a scalper it hides the most useful part of the story. Three extra columns change what a review can show: spread at entry, slippage versus the requested price, and time from click to fill.

Take a strategy with a 2-pip average target. A trade entered at 0.8 pips of spread and 0.2 of slippage already starts a full pip behind. Do that across 30 trades a day and the cost is a large share of gross profit, yet the journal only shows "won 1.9 pips" and nothing explains why the account drifts sideways.

Once the columns exist, the patterns show up quickly. Slippage tends to cluster around certain hours. Slow fills, say anything over 300 milliseconds on a setup that normally fills in 80, often line up with the worst prices. Some entry types get filled worse than others because they are placed when everyone else is also hitting the book.

Capturing the data does not need to be fancy. Note the price on the ticket before clicking, then compare with the history export later and compute the differences in a spreadsheet.

Which of the three has turned out to matter most in your own numbers?