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A useful trading journal does not force every review into one long form. Use one short template for a closed trade, one for the trading day, one for the week, and one for a defined session. Each template should answer a different question:
Review cycle
Question it should answer
Trade
Did the execution follow the plan?
Daily
What repeated across today's trades?
Weekly
Which evidence supports one change for next week?
Session
What changed inside this specific time window?
The four copy-ready templates below keep imported or calculated results separate from your own notes. Remove any prompt that you do not use in review. Add a field only when you can name the decision it will support.
Use the trade template after a position is closed. Keep it focused on the plan, the execution, and the evidence you want to find later.
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Setup:Direction:Plan- Entry condition:- Invalidation level:- Target or exit condition:- Planned risk:Execution- Did I follow the entry condition? Yes / No- Did I follow the exit condition? Yes / No- Deviation, if any:Evidence- Chart or screenshot:- Relevant market context:- One fact to carry into the next review:
Do not copy fill prices, fees, quantity, or calculated P&L into the note when your journal already stores them. Keeping those values in their source record preserves provenance and prevents the note from disagreeing with the trade data later.
The final line is deliberately factual. It records what the trade adds to the next review without grading the result as good or bad. A profitable trade can contain a process deviation; a losing trade can follow the recorded plan.
The daily template groups the day's trades. Use it to find repetition that is hard to see while reviewing one trade at a time.
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Date:Accounts in scope:Plan for the day- Sessions or hours traded:- Setups allowed:- Conditions that would stop trading:What happened- Trades reviewed:- Setups traded:- Rules followed:- Deviations:Patterns- What repeated across trades?- Did results depend on one setup, instrument, or time window?- Is any source data incomplete or awaiting correction?Next day- Keep:- Change:- Verify before the next session:
State the account scope near the top. If you trade through more than one account, a combined daily note answers a different question from an account-specific note. The scope should remain visible when you return to the entry later.
Do not turn one day's result into a general conclusion. Record the pattern you observed and carry it forward for comparison with later days.
The weekly template connects individual notes to a single operational change. Review the underlying trades before you fill it in.
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Week:Accounts and filters in scope:Data check- Are all trades imported?- Are fees, corrections, and partial fills complete?- Which records are excluded, and why?Review- Trade count:- Net result and currency:- Results by setup:- Repeated rule deviations:- Trades that need a second review:Decision- Evidence supporting a change:- One change for next week:- How the change will be checked:Open items- Missing records:- Questions to resolve:
Record the currency and filters with any weekly result. A number without its account, currency, and trade scope is difficult to reproduce. If an import is incomplete, name the gap instead of treating a partial week as final.
Keep the decision section to one change. Other findings can remain under open items until the evidence is strong enough to act on them. Journal analysis supports review; it does not guarantee a trading outcome. Read the Tradeways risk disclosure before using journal findings to support a trading decision.
A session is a defined time range rather than a full day. Use this template when the opening hour, an event window, or another bounded period needs its own review.
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Session name:Start and end time:Timezone:Accounts in scope:Before the session- Market context:- Setups allowed:- Conditions that cancel the plan:During the session- Trades reviewed:- Changes in conditions:- Execution deviations:After the session- What was observable in this window?- What remains uncertain?- What should be compared with the next similar session?
Always include the timezone. A label such as “morning session” is ambiguous when accounts, imports, or reviewers use different zones. A start time, end time, and IANA timezone make the review window reproducible.
Keep event commentary as an observation, not an explanation you cannot verify. “Volatility increased after the release” and “the release caused every later move” are different claims. The template gives you space to preserve that distinction.
The trade review records whether one execution matched its plan.
The daily review looks for repetition across that day's trades.
The weekly review checks the complete dataset and records one change.
The session review compares a specific time window with other similar windows.
Do not copy the same paragraph into all four entries. Link or refer back to the underlying trade evidence, then write only what belongs at the wider review level. This keeps the weekly entry readable and makes it possible to trace a conclusion back to the relevant trades.
The related guide to trading journal fields helps decide which structured values belong beside these notes. Use fields for facts you filter or aggregate. Use templates for context, checks, and decisions that need sentences.
Tradeways currently supports reusable templates for trade, daily, weekly, and session entries. Create each template in the Journal library, paste the matching structure, and remove prompts that do not belong in your process.
You can apply a template manually from the editor or assign one to an entry type in Journal settings. A daily entry can also use a weekday-specific override. Applying a template replaces the entry's current content, so review the entry first; version history can restore the previous content.
Start with one template. Use it for a full review cycle, remove prompts that stay blank, and then add the next scope. The goal is not to collect more text. It is to make each review answer its assigned question with traceable evidence.
