Trader record-keeping: how to log trades and results
Trader record-keeping is a complete log of trading: instrument, side, size, prices, fees, result, and a mark for whether it followed the rule. The record starts with exchange facts and ends where you separate the plan from the impulse.
What belongs in the record
Include anything that changes capital or explains the decision. Instrument, side, size, entry and exit, fees, funding, result in money or R. Next to that, a short field: rule followed or broken.
A forecast, someone else's signal, and a screenshot "for memory" do not belong. A screenshot cannot be summed for a month or filtered by violations. Records you cannot count are a folder of pictures, not a journal.
Why the exchange blotter is not the record
The exchange knows the fill. It does not know whether the stop was in the plan before entry, or whether you raised risk after two losses. Order history is raw material. Trader record-keeping starts when the fill is tied to the intention.
If the intention is not written down, a week later you cannot tell a planned entry from one you took because price already left. Memory is a poor archive here.
Fees, partial closes, and more than one venue
A result without fees is overstated. A partial close written as one row hides an early exit. Two exchanges in two spreadsheets do not produce one violation rate. A sound record keeps every fill and one human mark per decision.
Do not edit execution numbers by hand. If you "correct" the price to what should have happened, the record starts confirming a feeling instead of the fill. Feelings belong in their own field, not in the PnL column.
How records connect to psychology and analytics
Without a record, trader psychology stays a story and analytics stays an opinion about the chart. With a record you can see which part of the loss came from the market and which part came from the decision after a loser.
Keep the record even with a simple strategy. It does not make the entry smarter. It shows whether you took the entry you described. That is practical record-keeping: not a pretty table, but a check of plan against fact.