Lesson 38 · The Journal
“I need to be more disciplined” is not a plan. “Chasing cost me 6R this month” is. Mistake tags turn the first sentence into the second.
Keep a fixed list of mistakes you actually make, and tag every trade where one happened, win or lose.
Add up the R on tagged trades. That’s the price of each mistake.
Fix the most expensive one first. Just one.
Most traders know their bad habits. What they don’t know is what each one costs. Without a number, every habit feels about equally bad, so nothing gets fixed. Tagging mistakes gives each one a price.
Your mistake list
Keep it short and specific. Vague tags like “bad trade” or “emotional” can’t be acted on. Good tags describe something you did:
| Tag | What it means |
|---|---|
| Chased | Entered well above the planned entry, after the move had already gone |
| Moved stop | Widened or removed the stop after entering |
| Oversized | Took more shares than the plan allowed for that setup |
| No setup | Took a trade that didn’t match any defined setup |
| Revenge | Traded to win back a loss, not because of a setup |
| Early exit | Sold before the stop or target without a planned reason |
| Over max loss | Kept trading after hitting the daily loss limit |
Add your own, but keep the total around eight. If you find yourself inventing a new tag every day, the tags are too narrow.
Tag winners too
This is the part people skip. A trade where you chased and it worked still gets the “chased” tag. If you only tag losers, the report will say chasing is always a disaster, and you won’t believe it, because you remember the times it paid. Tagging every instance gives you the real average.
Put a price on each one
Once a few weeks are tagged, group your trades by mistake tag and add up the R. Now you have a list like “moved stop: −7R across 5 trades” or “chased: −3R across 11 trades” (example figures). Some mistakes are frequent and cheap. Some are rare and expensive. Both kinds show up clearly.
Also look at trades with no mistake tag as a group. Comparing clean trades to tagged ones is one of the most useful views a journal has: it shows what your trading looks like when you do what you planned.
Fix one at a time
Pick the most expensive mistake and make it your only focus for the next week or two. Write the rule that prevents it (“no entry more than 2% above the planned entry”, for example) and track how often you follow it. When it drops off the top of the list, move to the next one. The lesson on turning findings into rules covers how to test that properly.
Putting it together
- Keep about eight specific mistake tags that describe an action.
- Tag every trade where the mistake happened, including winners.
- Total the R per tag to see what each mistake costs.
- Compare clean trades with tagged trades.
- Work on the most expensive mistake first, one at a time.
An honest word: tagging only works if you tag yourself fairly. If you leave tags off when it’s embarrassing, the report will flatter you, and you’ll keep paying for the mistake you hid. Educational content only, not financial advice.
Free, by email
Get the journal series in your inbox
All 16 journal lessons in one email, then a short note when a new lesson goes up. Nothing else. Unsubscribe any time.
← Previous: Naming Your Setups So the Data Means Something Next: Logging Emotion and State Without Writing an Essay →