Trading journal
A trading journal is a structured record of every trade — setup, size, entry, exit, result, and the reasoning at the time — kept to expose patterns that memory edits out.
A useful entry logs the instrument, direction, planned and realized R-multiple, whether the trade followed the written plan, and the state you took it in — calm, bored, recovering a loss. Chart screenshots at entry and exit make later review concrete instead of nostalgic, and a simple format you maintain beats a detailed one you abandon.
The payoff is aggregate. After 50–100 entries, the journal shows expectancy by setup, session, and day of week, and puts numbers on mistakes: moved stops, unplanned entries, size creep. Reviewing weekly and changing one behavior at a time is the standard loop; a full template is in the trading journal guide.
In a prop-firm challenge
Most failed evaluations end in a rule breach rather than a strategy collapse, so a challenge journal should track proximity to the rules: closest approach to the daily loss limit, trade count on losing days, and size taken after losses. Logging near-misses catches overtrading and revenge patterns while they are still cheap — before they become the breach described in mistakes that blow evaluation accounts.