2017 UPDATE: This spreadsheet page has had well over 100,000 visits for years so I hired a developer to make a Free Trade Journal Tool right here on StockTrader.com. As of April 2019, StockTrader.com readers log well over 10,000 stock trades (by hand) each month!
I’ve had quite a few requests for a copy of the spreadsheet I use for my trading journal. I uploaded it to the server so feel free to download a copy if you’re interested. It’s not the most elegant spreadsheet but it does what I need. I’ve never been a big Excel guy, so I had to use brute force to get some things done.
Some articles here on the site that may help you:
- The 3 Phases of Trade Analysis & The Big Secret Few Know
- 11 Key Variables for Successful Trade Analysis
- 5 Key Ways Tagging Your Trades Improves Your Performance
- Why Defining Investment Risk as “R” is Critical to Successful Investing
- Investors Guide to Conducting Post-Trade Analysis
Here’s some detail about the columns:
- Expectancy: An average of column K (R Multiple). This formula must be modified each day to include the latest rows.
- Total P&L: Sum of Column J (P&L)
- Trade #: Just used for some calculations later…
- L/S: Long or Short
- QTY: Number of shares
- Bought: Purchase price
- Sold: Selling price
- Initial Risk: Dollars at risk based on the initial stop
- Comm: Commission for both sides of the trade. I have it set to calculate based on the number of shares entered in column E.
- P&L: The actual P&L, including commission
- R Multiple: P&L divided by the Initial Risk
- % Wins: This is calculated by dividing column R (Sum W/L) by column A (Trade #)
- Comments: I use this to list errors made on the trade or anything else worth noting.
- $ at Work: This gives me an idea of how much money was in the position. It’s simply QTY (column E) divided by Bought (purchase price). Note that this is not accurate for shorts but it’s close enough for government work. 🙂
- % P&L: The percentage return for the trade. P&L divided by $ at Work. Again, not exact for shorts.
- Initial % Risk: Just tells me how far my stop was from my entry in percentage terms.
- W/L: Tells whether the trade was a winner (1) or a loser (0). This is used by the next column, Sum W/L.
- Sum W/L: A running total of the W/L column. This is used in the % Wins column.
Have ideas for how I can improve the spreadsheet? Email me!
