Trading Log: Free Template + What to Track (and What to Skip)
A trading log is the simplest piece of infrastructure in trading and the most skipped. Every funded trader keeps one. Most losing traders plan to start one next week. This post gives you a working template you can copy today, and an honest answer on when a log outgrows the spreadsheet it started in.
The template
Seven columns. Copy these into any spreadsheet, or use them as your checklist in a journal app:
| Column | Example | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Date / time | 2026-07-03 09:42 | Session and day-of-week analysis later |
| Symbol + direction | EURUSD long | The anchor for everything |
| Entry / stop / target | 1.0850 / 1.0820 / 1.0910 | The stop defines your risk unit |
| Size | 1.0 lot | Without it, P&L analysis is guesswork |
| Setup | Pullback | Fixed list only, no free text |
| Result in R | +2.0R | Profit or loss divided by amount risked |
| Emotion at entry | Calm | The column that explains the most losses |
Two optional columns that earn their place fast: followed plan? (yes/no) and one-sentence reason for entry. If the sentence will not come, the trade should not either.
The three logging mistakes that ruin the data
Logging after the session instead of at entry. Memory edits history within hours. The trade you logged live says "entered on FOMO after missing the first move." The same trade logged at 10pm says "momentum continuation entry." One of these will save you money next month.
Free-text setup names. "Breakout", "break out", "BO retest" and "london breakout" are four different rows to a spreadsheet and one setup to you. Fix the list at five to eight named setups and choose from it. Ranking setups by total R is the single most profitable report your log can produce, and it only works with clean categories.
Skipping the losers. A log with holes where the bad days should be is a highlight reel. The embarrassing trades carry nearly all of the information.
What your log should answer after 50 trades
- Which setup earns the most R, and which one quietly loses it?
- What do trades entered within 30 minutes of a loss actually average? (For most traders: sharply negative. Our revenge trading guide covers the fix.)
- Which day and session carry your results, and which ones just carry your fees?
- Are losses clustered at minus 1R, or do minus 2R entries reveal stops being moved? See R-multiples explained if that sentence needs unpacking.
If your log cannot answer these in under a minute, it is a diary, not a log.
When the spreadsheet stops being enough
A spreadsheet handles the first 50 trades well. The friction shows up after that: R formulas break when you add futures to the forex tab, session breakdowns need pivot tables you have to maintain, screenshots live in a separate folder nobody opens, and prop firm drawdown tracking simply does not fit in cells. Around trade 100, most traders either build a fragile spreadsheet machine or stop logging.
That is the point of a dedicated journal: the same seven columns, but the R math, setup rankings, session heatmaps, emotion analysis and prop firm drawdown tracking compute themselves, and importing your broker history takes a minute instead of an evening. We wrote a fuller comparison in trading journal vs spreadsheet.
Start with the template today, in whatever tool you will actually open tomorrow. The columns matter less than the streak.
Stop guessing. Start tracking.
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