How to Keep a Forex Trading Journal: What to Record, a Free Template and MT5's Built-In Report

Short answer: a trading journal is a record of every trade you take, with the numbers (entry, stop, size, result) and the reasons (why you took it, whether you followed your rules, how you felt). The numbers can come straight from your platform. The reasons only you can write down. A weekly review of both is what turns a journal from a diary into a way to find, and stop repeating, your most expensive mistakes.

This guide gives you the fields to record, a template you can copy into a spreadsheet, a review routine and a short guide to MetaTrader 5's built-in report.

Why keep one at all

Most retail CFD accounts lose money. Every regulated broker in the UK and EU has to publish the share of its own retail accounts that lost money, and that figure sits in the risk warning at the bottom of this page. Our explainer on what the retail loss percentage measures shows how to read it.

A journal does not change those odds by itself. What it does is give you evidence instead of memory. Memory is kind to winners and quick to forget the trade you took out of boredom or to "win back" a loss. The common traps, such as revenge trading, fear of missing out and moving a stop, are covered in our guide to trading psychology. A journal is how you find out which of them you actually fall into, and how often.

What to record for every trade

Split the record into what you plan before the trade, what happened, and what you learned.

Before you open the trade

• Date and time, and the trading session (London, New York, overlap).
• Instrument and direction, for example EUR/USD, long.
• Setup name. Give each of your setups a short name so you can compare them later.
• Reason. One or two sentences. What do you expect, and why?
• Entry, stop-loss and target. The stop is the level where the idea is wrong.
• Position size and amount at risk, in money and as a percentage of the account. Our position-size walkthrough shows how to get from the stop to the size.

After the trade closes

• Exit price and time, and why you exited: stop, target, manual close or margin close-out.
• Result in money, in pips and as a multiple of the amount you risked (R).
• Costs: spread, commission and any overnight swap.
• Rules followed? Yes or no, and if no, which rule.

Reflection

• Your state before the trade: calm, rushed, bored, chasing a loss.
• One lesson, in a sentence. If there is none, write "none".

A template you can copy

Paste this header row into a spreadsheet and add one row per trade. The example row is invented for illustration.

Recording the result as a multiple of risk (R) lets you compare trades of different sizes. A trade that risked 1% and lost 1% is −1R; one that risked 1% and made 2% is +2R.

The weekly review: where the value is

Set aside the same half-hour every week. Sort the week's trades and answer five questions:

• Which setup made money, and which lost it? Total the R for each setup.
• How many trades broke a rule, and what did those trades cost in total?
• When did you trade best and worst? Look at session and day of the week.
• What did the losers have in common? The same pair, the same time, the same mood?
• What one change will you make next week? One, not five.

If one setup keeps losing over a reasonable number of trades, stop trading it on a live account and go back to a demo account to rework it. If rule-breaking trades are where the losses are, the problem is discipline, not the strategy.

Let MetaTrader 5 fill in the numbers

You do not have to calculate the statistics by hand. MetaTrader 5's trading report builds them from your account history. You open it from the history section's context menu ("Report") or from the View menu under Reports. It covers the account you are logged into, so switch accounts to analyse another one.

Four of the metrics are worth understanding, in MT5's own definitions:

• Profit factor: the ratio of total profit to total loss. A value of 1 means profits equal losses.
• Recovery factor: absolute profit divided by the maximum drawdown. Higher values mean the account recovered faster from its worst drop.
• Maximum drawdown: the largest percentage fall in balance or equity from a local peak.
• Sharpe ratio: a measure of how consistent the returns were relative to their variability.

Each tab can be saved as HTML or PDF. Save one at the end of every month and keep it with your journal. The report tells you what happened; your notes tell you why, and you need both.

Spreadsheet, notebook or app?

A common combination is the platform report for the numbers plus a spreadsheet for reasons and rules. Pick whatever you will actually keep up every day.

Where your broker fits in

Any regulated broker with MetaTrader 5 gives you the report above. Eightcap offers MT4, MT5 and TradingView, as our Eightcap review sets out, and you can visit Eightcap to check the conditions offered in your country. We earn a commission if you open an account through our links; it does not change anything written above. The journal works the same at any broker, including on a demo account, which is the best place to start one.

Risk Warning

CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. Between 51–89% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs. You should consider whether you understand how CFDs work and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.