Screenshots and the daily entry

The fields in the last lesson are the data. This lesson is about the two things that make the data usable months later: a picture of what you were looking at, and a short daily entry that records what the numbers cannot.

Why screenshots

Six weeks from now, at the monthly review, you will look at a row that says "C grade, early-exit, −0.4R" and you will not remember the trade. The screenshot is what lets you check the grade. Was it really a C? Did the setup look as marginal as the grade says, or did you grade it harshly because it lost? Did the early exit happen at a level that looked frightening at the time and looks like nothing now?

Memory rewrites trades to match their outcomes. Screenshots do not.

What to capture

Two images per trade, minimum:

1. At entry, the moment the order is placed. The chart on the entry time frame, with the setup's levels marked, the stop drawn, and the intended target drawn. The image should let a stranger check the setup boxes.
2. At exit, after the trade is closed. Same chart, showing where the exit fell and what price did afterwards for a few bars.

Optional third: the higher time frame at entry, if your setup has a context condition on it.

Keep it mechanical. Same chart layout, same time frame, same indicators, every time. A screenshot with a different template each day is a set of pictures, not a data set.

Naming and storage

Name the files so they sort: 2026-09-10_MES_01_entry.png, 2026-09-10_MES_01_exit.png. Date, instrument, trade number that day, which image. Put them in a folder per month. Link or embed them in the journal row. The journal template has a column for the file names.

Key idea: Memory rewrites trades to match their outcomes. A screenshot at entry, with stop and target drawn, is the only record of what you actually saw.

The daily entry

Separate from the trade rows, one short entry per trading day, including days with no trades. Five lines, written in the post-market half of the routine:

DATE        Thu 10 Sep
FILTER      ON range 0.52%  PASS
TRADES      2 taken (A, B), 1 valid setup missed (09:52, hesitated)
R           +1.4R day, +2.1R week, +3.8R month
NOTE        Missed the 09:52 trade because I was still marking levels.
            Pre-market needs to finish by 09:20, not 09:28.

The TRADES line records missed setups. A valid setup not taken is a plan-following event exactly as much as an invalid setup taken, and it is invisible in the trade rows because there is no trade. Over a month, missed setups are often the largest execution cost, and the only way to know that is to write them down.

The NOTE line is one observation, with a proposed fix if there is one. Not a diary. Not "felt frustrated today". One thing you noticed that could become a rule.

No-trade days

Days the filter failed still get an entry: date, filter value, FAIL, "no trades", note if any. Two reasons. First, it keeps the habit unbroken; a journal that is only written on trading days becomes a journal that is written when you feel like it. Second, at the monthly review, the count of filter-fail days is data about whether the filter is set at a useful level. Twenty fail days out of twenty-two is a filter that is too tight, whatever the trade results say.

Timing

The daily entry is written before you leave the desk. Not that evening, not the next morning. Within an hour of session end, while the reasons are still the real reasons. A journal written the next morning is a journal written by someone who already knows how the day ended and is explaining it, which is a different document.

What the journal is not

It is not a place to record your opinions about the market, your predictions for tomorrow, or your feelings about the Fed. Those can go in a separate file if you must write them, and you will find after a few months that you have stopped, because they turned out not to be useful. The journal records what you did, what the plan said, and the gap between them.

Try it: Set up the screenshot template today: one chart layout, saved, with the time frame and indicators your setup uses. Take a test screenshot, name it with the convention above, and put it in a folder called 2026-09. Tomorrow, write the five-line daily entry even if you do not trade.

Recap

• Two screenshots per trade, at entry with stop and target drawn, and at exit. Same layout every time.
• Name files date_instrument_number_stage so they sort, one folder per month, linked from the journal row.
• One five-line daily entry, including no-trade days, written within an hour of session end.
• The TRADES line records missed valid setups. They are execution errors and are invisible without this line.
• The journal records what you did and what the plan said. Opinions and predictions go elsewhere or nowhere.