From a post on Grove Trades:
I’ve taken the last several months of trades and imported over 900 historical trades into an online trading journal a couple weeks ago. For those who don’t have a trading journal setup yet, www.tradervue.com is a great new online trading journal that’s free. I really like it after reviewing many others (free doesn’t hurt), and the reports are also useful. Simple and elegant to use, but powerful.
By reviewing each of my historical trades carefully one by one (and trying to relive the moment — why I took it, how I felt, etc.), and then writing journal notes and placing appropriate tags with useful metrics (grade, setup type, outcome, market conditions, target met or not, etc.), I can run reports to see what setups are working for me, how much those setups make, win/loss %, how well I executed, what type of trades are NOT working for me, etc. To get these types of reports, the “trick” is to spend the big effort to add meaningful tags into your trade journal records.
As you, Dr. Brett, and others have mentioned, I want to focus on my strengths. This journal is helping me significantly to discover what my strengths are, via facts from my actual trading results.
It’s definitely worth reading the whole thing, as well as the article on the SMB Capital blog that it’s referring to. It’s fun to hear from folks who find Tradervue is making a real difference for them!