The fields that matter

Most trading journals are a list of entries, exits and P&L. That is a broker statement with extra typing, and it changes nothing, because P&L is the one number that tells you least about what you did. A journal that changes behaviour records the decisions, not just the outcomes, so that the weekly review can see where the plan was followed and where it was not.

The core fields

Every trade gets one row. The fields, in the order you fill them:

Field	Filled when	What it is
Date, instrument	Entry	Obvious
Plan version	Entry	Which version of the plan was in force (v1.0, v1.1, ...)
Filter value	Entry	The number the filter read that day, not just PASS
Setup grade	Entry	A, B or C; see below
Direction, entry, stop, size	Entry	The numbers
Planned R	Entry	What the trade would make if it reached the plan's target
Emotional state	Entry	One word from a fixed list
Exit, exit reason	Exit	Stop / target / trail / time / invalidation / session end / early / other
Realised R	Exit	Actual P&L divided by 1R, after costs
Plan-follow score	Exit	0 to 3; see below
Mistake tags	Exit	From a fixed list; can be several or none
Screenshot	Exit	Entry-time and exit-time chart images
One-line note	Exit	The single most important thing about this trade

Thirteen fields. About ninety seconds per trade once it is habit. The journal template has them laid out with the fixed lists built in.

Setup grade

A grade is assigned at entry, before you know the outcome, and it answers one question: how completely was the setup present?

A: every box on the setup checklist ticked, filter PASS, no ambiguity.
B: every box ticked, but one was marginal, or the trade was near the edge of the timing window.
C: a box was not ticked. This trade should not have been taken. It is logged anyway.

The point of the grade is the comparison at the monthly review. If A-trades have positive expectancy and C-trades are negative, you have learned the most valuable thing a journal can teach: the setup works and you are diluting it. If A and C perform the same, the setup's criteria are not doing anything, which is also worth knowing.

Grade honestly. A journal full of A-grades with no Cs is a journal that is not being used.

Plan-follow score

Assigned at exit, and it measures execution, independent of outcome:

3: entry, stop, size, exits and every management rule followed exactly.
2: one minor deviation (a late entry by a bar, a trail moved a tick early).
1: one major deviation (stop widened, early exit before invalidation, size wrong).
0: two or more major deviations, or a trade taken outside the plan entirely.

A winning trade with a score of 0 is a bad trade. A losing trade with a score of 3 is a good trade. If that sentence feels wrong, read it again until it does not; it is the whole idea of the journal.

Key idea: Grade the setup at entry and the execution at exit, both independent of P&L. A losing trade scored 3 is a good trade. A winning trade scored 0 is a bad one.

Emotional state

One word, from a fixed list, at entry: calm, eager, bored, anxious, angry, revenge, confident, tired. The list is fixed so the field can be sorted. "Felt a bit off" cannot be sorted; "anxious" can, and after fifty trades you will know what your anxious trades return.

Mistake tags

Also a fixed list, applied at exit. Start with these and add sparingly:

late-entry, early-entry, chased, oversized, undersized, stop-widened, early-exit, held-past-invalidation, missed-time-stop, no-stop-placed, outside-session, outside-setup, revenge, external

A trade can have several or none. The monthly review counts each tag, and the most frequent one is the next thing to fix. Fixing the most frequent mistake is usually worth more than any change to the setup.

Planned R vs realised R

Planned R is what the trade would have returned if every exit rule had fired at its level. Realised R is what it actually returned. The gap between them, summed over the month, is the cost of execution errors, and it is the number that tells you whether your problem is the plan or the following of it. A plan with 0.3R expected per trade and a 0.25R average execution gap is not a plan problem.

Try it: Open the journal template and log your last five trades from memory, with the setup grade and plan-follow score as honestly as you can. Notice which fields you cannot fill because you did not record them at the time. Those are the fields you start recording tomorrow.

Recap

Thirteen fields per trade, filled at entry and at exit, about ninety seconds once it is habit.
Setup grade (A/B/C) at entry measures how completely the setup was present, before the outcome is known.
Plan-follow score (0 to 3) at exit measures execution, independent of P&L.
Emotional state and mistake tags come from fixed lists so they can be sorted and counted.
Planned R minus realised R, summed, is the cost of execution errors and tells you whether the problem is the plan or the following of it.