Using a journal to fix trading psychology
Founder of TradeStack. Builds the importer and reviews every broker export format by hand.
Tag each trading day with your mental state and rule adherence, then compare P&L across those tags. Revenge trading, FOMO and overtrading show up as measurable clusters of losses, not vague feelings.
Tag the state, not the story
Use a short fixed set of tags: calm, rushed, revenge, FOMO, bored, hesitant. Fixed tags are comparable across months; free text is not.
Find the expensive emotions
Group P&L by tag. Most traders find that two or three tags account for the majority of their losses. That is your highest-leverage fix, and it costs nothing to implement.
Spot overtrading with trade counts
Compare P&L against number of trades per day. If your best days have 3 trades and your worst have 12, the problem is frequency, not strategy.
Turn it into one rule
Convert each finding into a single hard rule: stop after two losers, no trades after 11:30, no size increase on a red day. Then log whether you followed it, and score yourself weekly.
Frequently asked
How do I stop revenge trading?
Make it visible first. Tag the days, measure the cost, then add a hard stop rule such as no new trades after two consecutive losses.
Does tagging emotions actually help?
Yes, once the tags are compared against P&L. Emotional notes without numbers rarely change behaviour.
Does TradeStack support emotion tags?
Yes. Each day supports notes, tags and emotions alongside the P&L for that day.
Sources
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