Having a trading journal is key to tracking both your winning and losing trades.
You cannot fix a problem if you don’t know that it exists. That is what a trading journal is designed to help you with.
Not only will a trading journal help you see your clear profit and loss figures, it will also help you perfect your trading strategy and increase profits.
In this post we go through the best free trading journals that can be used to track and improve your trading whether you are trading stocks, cryptocurrencies or Forex.
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Table of Contents
Forex Trading Journal
Trade Insights Trading Journal
Whilst not the prettiest of designs, for a free journal it comes with a lot of benefits and features.
With the Trade Insights journal you have the ability to import your trading history from a broker or via a file.
Unlike other journals that you store on your PC, all of this data is centralized for you so you don’t need to have multiple blogs, spreadsheets or other software.
There are a lot of features, but just a few are;
- Clear profit and loss.
- Allows tracking of stocks, Forex, futures and options.
- Performance metrics.
- Instrument price and volume related performance metrics.
- You can view entries, exits, and profit / loss plotted on charts.
- Breakdown of your trades showing profit and loss.
- There is a community that shows leading performers and how you are performing in comparison (if you set your journal to be publicly shown).
Get Forex trading journal here.
Earn Forex XLS / Spreadsheet Journal
This is the simplest and most straightforward journal on this list.
It is a spreadsheet / xls journal you can download, save and use as you need and see fit.
This journal has the capability to track profit and loss, show updated balances and how your account is tracking.
If you do not have Excel, then you can use this journal in Google Sheets by first downloading the file, then opening sheets, clicking “file” > “open” > and “upload”.
Get free spreadsheet journal here.
Cryptocurrency Trading Journal
MyFxBook Journal
MyFxBook is an extremely well-known and popular website for tracking and verifying trading results.
It is also excellent when being used as a trading journal.
This journal gives you the ability to track any market, Forex pair or cryptocurrency you are trading as the data is being taken directly from your trading history.
MyFxBook shows you very in-depth and detailed information about your trading history.
You can also keep your profile private so that only you are the one who is seeing your trading history making it a great tool for traders who are learning or testing a new strategy.
This journal shows you everything from;
- Account profit and loss.
- Amount of trades made.
- Each trades details.
- If you win more long or short trades.
- What your average pip win and loss amount is.
- What your account growth or loss is in real money and percentage terms.
- And a lot more.
Stock Market Trading Journal
Stock Trader Journal
This is one of the most popular free stock trading journals. It is another online cloud based trading journal and it is also free to use.
This journal allows you to log all of your stock market trades, test potential new trading strategies and spot errors before they start costing your money.
This is a forward looking journal and does not support importing old data. All trades will have to be logged as you make and close them.
Read and download stock market journal here.
Trade Bench Journal
The Trade Bench journal is another free tool with a very nice amount of benefits for free software.
This journal has some benefits that the other journals do not have such as the plan trade feature that allows you to create customizable checklists for your trade plans.
Another really nice feature is that it allows you to add text comments before entering your trade. This is very useful especially for new traders or traders testing out a new strategy. Having this feature allows you to go back and revisit what you were thinking before you made the trade.
Some of the benefits of this journal include;
- Fully pre-plan your trades.
- Compare trades.
- Trades dashboard.
- Real trading & virtual trading.
- Customizable reports.
- Money management, position sizing and risk management.
Read and download stock market journal here.
Lastly
Whilst many trading journals will allow you to track your trades over different markets such as Forex and stocks, they are often more suited to one market over another.
If you trade one particular market, then you would probably be best served using the journal that is created for that market.
If you trade a wide variety of markets you may be better off using a spreadsheet or MyFxBook solution where you can tweak things as you need and have all of your trades easily logged.