Blog · Oct 27, 2026

Trading psychology journal: how to track emotions and rule breaks (futures)

A trading psychology journal records two things on every trade: a one-word label for your state, written before you enter, and a yes/no check of whether you broke one of your own rules. Then you join those two columns to the fills and put net-after-fees dollars and R on each pattern, so you can see what a state or a rule break cost in your own sample.

That is the whole method. It is not a diary and it is not a mood score. It is behaviour you can count. Below: when to write each line, which labels and rule breaks to use, a worked futures example with whole-tick math, and a template to copy.

What a trading psychology journal records, and what it doesn't

Your journal already holds the trade itself. For the full list of fields, see what to write in each entry. A psychology journal adds four short fields on top of that record.

• State label. One plain word or short phrase describing how you were before the entry. "Calm." "Rushed." "Wants it back." You write it before you click, not after you see the result.
• Rule check. Did this trade break one of the rules you set before the session? Yes or no. If yes, which one.
• Trigger. What happened just before. A losing exit, a big win, the open, a news release, getting close to your daily limit.
• Cost. Net after fees, in dollars and in R. This is filled in from the fills, not from memory.

What it leaves out matters just as much.

• No essays. Long paragraphs about how the day felt are hard to count and easy to rewrite later. If a sentence helps, add one sentence to the trade note.
• No mood score. A number from one to ten looks precise but doesn't tell you what you did. A label paired with a rule check tells you both the state and the action.
• No verdicts about yourself. This is a log of behaviour at the desk, not personality. "I entered inside my cooldown after a loss" is useful. "I am impulsive" isn't something a spreadsheet can show.

Keep it small enough to fill in on a busy day; a journal written only on calm days misses the days that matter.

Emotions vs rule breaks: why you track both

A state label and a rule break are different kinds of data, and the journal works because it keeps them apart.

A label is a self-report. "Rushed" is what you noticed about yourself at that moment, and it can be wrong. Labels are cheap and immediate, but they are an opinion written by the person with the most at stake.

A rule break is a fact. "Entered within 90 seconds of a losing exit when my cooldown is five minutes" can be checked against timestamps. "Traded 4 contracts when my max is 2" can be checked against the fill. Nobody has to agree about how you felt for that line to be true or false.

You track both because they answer different questions.

• The label asks: what state was I in when the trade started?
• The rule check asks: what did I actually do?

Joined, they show whether a state tends to come before a particular action in your own trades. If most of your revenge entries carry the label "wants it back", that's a pattern worth a rule. If "rushed" trades lose but break no rules, look at the setup, or at nothing at all yet.

A winning rule break still counts

This is the part most traders skip. If you move your stop away from price and the market comes back and you exit green, the trade still broke a rule. It goes in the log as a rule break, with its net, the same as a losing one.

Log only the losing ones and rule breaks will look more expensive than they are, and you'll stop trusting the numbers. The winning ones are also what teach you to do it again: a moved stop that worked is how the next moved stop happens.

When to write it

Timing does most of the work. A label written after the exit is coloured by the result. A label written before the entry is not. Keep each step short enough that it doesn't slow your execution.

Before the session

Thirty seconds, once. Write down:

• Your daily stop in dollars, your max contracts, and your cooldown after a loss in minutes.
• Any scheduled releases inside your trading window.
• One word for how you're starting the day. If you're tired, note it. That's all this line needs to say.

If these rules aren't written before the open, a "rule break" becomes a judgment call after the close.

Before each entry: one word

Write the label before you enter, or in the seconds after the fill if that's faster. One word from your list, not a sentence. If you want to write a paragraph before entry, "unsure" probably fits.

During the trade: only if you act on an urge

Most trades need nothing written while they're open. Add a line only if you do something off plan: you move the stop, add size, or close early. Write what you did and the price, e.g. "moved stop 40 → 69 ticks" or "closed at +20, target was +40". You're recording the action, not the feeling.

After the exit: 60 seconds

Within a minute of the exit, fill in:

• Rule check: yes or no, and which rule.
• Trigger, if there was one: "after loss", "first 10 minutes", "after CPI".
• Trade number of the day and time since your last exit.

Net and R come from the fills later. Get these lines down before the result changes your memory of the entry.

A short label list (keep it to 5–8)

A long list slows you down and spreads your sample thin: many labels over forty trades leaves every bucket tiny. Pick five to eight plain words for states you actually notice. Here is a starting list; change the words to whatever you'd naturally say.

Rules for the list:

• One label per trade. If two fit, pick the stronger one. Forcing a choice keeps buckets clean.
• Same spelling every time. "Wants it back" and "want it back" become two buckets in a spreadsheet.
• No grading. Labels aren't good or bad. "Calm" isn't a reward and "rushed" isn't a punishment. If you start writing "calm" because you want to have been calm, the label stops measuring anything.
• Revisit monthly, not daily. Drop a label you never use; add one if a note keeps not fitting.

Rule breaks to log

A rule break is an action plus a trigger, defined before the session so it can be checked afterwards. Write each one in terms you could verify from fills, timestamps and your written rules. Here are seven to start with, in plain definitions.

• Revenge entry. A new entry inside your cooldown window after a losing exit. The trigger is the loss; the action is entering before the cooldown ends.
• Trading after the daily stop. Any entry taken after the day's net loss has already passed the daily stop you wrote down. The trigger is the stop being hit; the action is the next entry.
• Size above max. A position larger than your max contracts. The trigger is often a strong read or a recent loss; the action is the size on the fill.
• Stop moved away. Your stop moved further from price after entry. The trigger is price approaching the stop; the action is the move. Record the before and after, in ticks.
• Averaging down. Adding to a position that is already against you. The trigger is the open loss; the action is the add.
• Chase. Entering after price has already moved past your planned entry by more than an amount you set, say 8 ticks on MNQ. The trigger is watching the move without you; the action is the late fill.
• Early exit. Closing before your stop or target without a reason you'd written into the plan, such as a time stop. The trigger is usually a small open profit or a quick pullback; the action is the manual close.

Keep definitions boring and exact. "Chased" with no threshold becomes "anything I regret"; "entered more than 8 ticks past the planned level" can be checked.

If one trade breaks two rules, say a revenge entry where you then moved the stop, record both, but count that trade's net once when you add up dollars. Otherwise the total will exceed the money that actually left the account.

Triggers and sequences

The label tells you the state; the trigger tells you what came right before it. Triggers are events you can see coming.

Common triggers to tag:

• After a loss. Especially a full stop, or two losses in a row.
• After a big win. A trade well above your average can come before a "sure of it" entry with more size.
• After hitting the daily limit. Any trade here is already a rule break; tag the trigger anyway.
• Near a prop limit. Getting close to a trailing drawdown or a daily loss limit set by an evaluation.
• First minutes of the open. Speed and volume change, and labels often do too.
• News. Scheduled releases inside your window, and any unscheduled move you reacted to.

Two extra numbers make sequences visible without much effort:

• Trade number of the day. Trade 1, 2, 3 and so on, counted per session. Use the exchange session, not the calendar day, so a Sunday evening trade belongs to Monday. The session day guide explains where the CME day rolls.
• Time since last exit. In seconds or minutes. A revenge entry is defined by this number, and it's the easiest one to forget to write down.

With those two columns you can ask simple questions later. Do trades after trade 6 look different? Do entries within two minutes of a losing exit carry a particular label? A filter and a sum will do.

Worked example: costing labels and rule breaks (illustrative)

Everything in this section is illustrative. The trades are made up to show the arithmetic. They are not results, and they are not a claim that any state causes losses.

Setup. MNQ, 2 contracts on every trade. MNQ moves in ticks of 0.25 index points, worth $0.50 per contract, so one tick on the 2-lot is $1.00. Fees are $1.30 per contract round trip, so $2.60 per trade. One R is a fixed $40. If you want to check tick values for other contracts, use the futures tick value calculator.

So for any trade: net = ticks × $1.00 − $2.60, and R = net ÷ $40.

The trader logged 24 trades over a few sessions, writing a label before each entry.

By label

Each line checks the same way. Calm: 62 ticks × $1.00 = $62.00 gross, 14 × $2.60 = $36.40 fees, $62.00 − $36.40 = $25.60 net, ÷ $40 = 0.64R. The rows add to the total: 14 + 6 + 4 = 24 trades, 62 − 48 − 70 = −56 ticks, $25.60 − $63.60 − $80.40 = −$118.40.

Notice the fees: −56 ticks gross becomes −$118.40 net because fees add $62.40, and every extra trade adds $2.60 whatever the label. The futures fee calculator shows the round-trip cost for your own rates.

By rule check

Six of the 24 trades broke a written rule. The trader also checked each one against its label.

The six rule breaks were three revenge entries (all labelled "wants it back"), two chases (both "rushed") and one early exit ("calm"). One of the revenge entries also had its stop moved away, so it carries two rule breaks but its net is counted once in the table.

Three of the six rule breaks were winners: a chase that made +32 ticks (+$29.40 net), a revenge entry that made +25 ticks (+$22.40 net) and an early exit at +16 ticks (+$13.40 net). They still count. Leave them out and the rule-break row would show −$156.80 from three trades, which overstates what breaking rules cost in this sample.

The useful detail is inside the "wants it back" row. Its four trades lost $80.40 net. The three revenge entries account for −84 ticks and −$91.80 net. The one trade in that label that followed the rules made +14 ticks, +$11.40 net. In this sample, the loss sits with the action, not with the label.

One trade: the moved stop

The largest single loss was a revenge entry where the stop was moved from 40 ticks to 69 ticks away from entry, and then hit.

• Actual: −69 ticks × $1.00 = −$69.00, minus $2.60 fees = −$71.60, or −1.79R.
• If the planned stop had held: −40 × $1.00 − $2.60 = −$42.60, or −1.07R.
• Moving the stop cost 29 ticks × $1.00 = $29.00 on this one trade.

That's the clearest line in the log, and it doesn't depend on any label.

What this sample does and doesn't say

Every bucket here is under 30 trades. Fourteen calm trades, six rushed, four "wants it back": these numbers describe what happened in this sample and nothing more. They don't show that rushed trades lose, and they certainly don't show that calm trades win.

What the trader can act on is the rule break, because it's already defined as something not to do. The label hints at when it's likely. The next step is a rule about the action, not about a feeling.

Turning a pattern into one if-then rule

Once a pattern shows up a few times, write one rule for it in if-then form. Make the "if" an event you can see and the "then" an action you can check.

• If I take a losing exit, then I don't enter again for 5 minutes. (Your cooldown. It turns revenge entries into a timer instead of willpower.)
• If the day's net reaches my daily stop, then I flatten and stop trading for the session. (No "one more to get back to even".)
• If price approaches my stop, then I either let it fill or exit at market. I don't move it away. (In the example, this would have saved $29.00 on one trade.)
• If price has moved more than 8 ticks past my planned entry, then I let it go and wait for the next setup.

One rule at a time, or you can't tell which one changed anything. Pick the rule break with the largest dollar cost in your log, write the if-then, and check it for a few weeks. A weekly trading review is the place to add up rule breaks and see whether the new rule held. To put a dollar figure on each rule break the same way you'd cost any tag, see the cost of each mistake tag.

Small samples: what a label on 6 trades can tell you

Six "rushed" trades that lost $63.60 feels like a finding. It isn't yet. A common rule of thumb is about 30 trades in a bucket before trusting its win rate or average. It's not a law: with fewer trades, one large winner or loser can swing the average. Six trades describe six trades.

That leads to a practical split.

• Rule breaks: act now. You don't need 30 revenge entries to know you'd rather not take them. The rule already says not to. The log tells you how often it happens and what it cost.
• Labels: watch, don't conclude. Keep logging. If "rushed" still looks different after 30 or more trades, it's worth a closer look at what those trades have in common: time of day, setup, trigger.
• Combined buckets get small fast. "Rushed + after a loss + first 10 minutes" might be three trades. That is a story, not a statistic.

This is another reason to keep the label list short: the fewer labels, the sooner any one of them reaches 30 trades.

Live, sim and prop accounts

The method is the same in every account: label before entry, rule check after exit, cost from the fills. What changes is what counts as a trigger and which rules carry the most weight.

• Live accounts. The dollars are your own, so fees and slippage are real and the cost column is exactly what left the account.
• Sim accounts. Rule breaks still count; habits formed in sim travel to live. Keep sim and live as separate accounts in the journal so you can compare labels between them.

Prop accounts: rule breaks near the drawdown floor

In an evaluation or funded account, the firm's limits become triggers. Tag any trade taken when the account was close to its trailing drawdown or daily loss limit, and check whether rule breaks cluster there, for example size above max to "make it back" before the floor. The account rules also give you hard numbers for your own daily stop: set it inside the firm's limit, not at it. How the floor moves depends on the firm's type of drawdown; the trailing drawdown explained guide walks through it, and the prop firm trading journal page covers tracking eval and funded accounts.

Where a journal like Tiedbook fits

Tiedbook doesn't read emotions: there's no emotion field, mood score or AI review. It has explicit mistake rules: revenge entry inside your cooldown, trading after the daily stop, size above max contracts, a stop moved away from price, and averaging down. You set the daily stop, max contracts, cooldown and R value in Settings, and R is net divided by that dollar amount. The list says which rule fired on which trade, not that you were emotional. A trade that breaks two rules is listed under both and counted once in the flagged total. That total only includes rules whose trades net to a loss: a rule whose trades are up overall is listed but left out of the total. To get the full net of every rule-break trade, winners included, as in the example above, add the nets of the rules left out to the flagged total yourself.

State labels go in as your tags or notes. They sit on the trade, flags don't overwrite them, you can search trades by tag or note, and both export in the CSV. Log chase and early exit as tags; they aren't built-in rules. Edge stats stay quiet until a bucket has 30 trades. See mistakes and risk and the trade journal. 7-day trial, card required.

Copyable trading psychology journal template

Plain text, so it works in a notes app, a spreadsheet or on paper. Copy the lines, keep the labels the same every day, and fill the cost column from your fills, not from memory. For a broader journal layout, see the futures trading journal template.

BEFORE THE SESSION
Date (session): ____   Account: live / sim / eval / funded
Daily stop: $____   Max contracts: ____   Cooldown after a loss: ____ min
Releases in my window: ____
Starting label: ____ (note if tired)

PER TRADE
Trade #: ____   Time since last exit: ____   Instrument / size: ____
Label before entry (one word): ____
Trigger: none / after loss / after big win / after daily limit / near prop limit / open / news
Off plan during the trade (only if I acted): ____
Rule broken? no / yes: revenge entry / after daily stop / size above max / stop moved away / averaging down / chase / early exit
Ticks: ____   Net after fees: $____   R: ____

END OF DAY
Trades: ____   Net after fees: $____   R: ____
Rule-break trades: ____   Their net, each trade counted once: $____
Winning rule breaks (still count): ____
Most common label: ____   Most common trigger: ____
Tomorrow's if-then rule: If ____, then ____.

Frequently asked questions

What is a trading psychology journal?

A trading psychology journal is a short log, kept alongside your trades, that records a one-word label for your state before each entry and a yes/no check of whether the trade broke one of your written rules. It joins those two columns to net-after-fees dollars and R from the fills, so you can see what each state or rule break cost in your own sample. It tracks behaviour, not personality.

Which emotions should I track in a trading journal?

Track five to eight states you actually notice at the desk, written as plain words you'd naturally use, for example calm, rushed, wants it back, bored, tired, sure of it and unsure. Use one label per trade and the same spelling every time, so each label becomes a clean bucket. Fewer labels means each bucket builds a sample faster, which matters more than describing every shade of feeling.

How do I track emotions quickly without slowing my trading?

Write one word before the entry and nothing during the trade unless you act off plan, such as moving a stop or adding size. Within a minute of the exit, add the rule check, the trigger and the trade number. Leave dollars and R for later, when you pull them from the fills. The whole thing should take well under a minute per trade.

What counts as a rule break?

A rule break is an action you can check against a rule you wrote before the session, such as entering inside your cooldown after a loss, trading after the daily stop, size above your max contracts, moving a stop away from price, averaging down, chasing past a set distance or exiting early without a planned reason. If it can only be judged by how you felt, it is a label, not a rule break.

What if a rule break wins?

Log it as a rule break anyway, with its net. If you only record rule breaks that lost, their total cost will look worse than it is and you'll stop trusting the numbers. Winning rule breaks are also the ones most likely to be repeated, so counting them keeps the record honest in both directions.

How do I find out what my emotions cost?

Add up net after fees and R for every trade carrying each label, and do the same for trades with and without a rule break. Count a trade that breaks two rules only once in any dollar total. Then look inside each label to see whether the loss comes from the rule-break trades or from the rest. In the illustrative example in this article, the rule-break trades in one label lost more than the whole label did.

How many trades before a pattern means anything?

A common rule of thumb is about 30 trades in a bucket before trusting its win rate or average, and even that is only a guide. A label on 6 trades describes those 6 trades. Rule breaks are different: you can act on them straight away, because the rule already says not to do it.

What is emotional or revenge trading, in behaviour terms?

In behaviour terms, revenge trading is a new entry taken soon after a losing exit, inside the cooldown you set, with part of the aim being to recover the loss. Emotional trading more broadly is any entry, size change or exit that departs from your written plan right after a trigger such as a loss, a big win or a fast move. Defining it by action and timing makes it something you can check.

Should I stop trading after a rule break?

Decide that before the session, not in the moment. Many traders write a simple if-then, such as stopping for the day at the daily stop or pausing for the cooldown after a loss. A written pause rule gives you an answer you don't have to make up on the spot.

Risk note

Futures trading involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. The examples in this article are illustrative and are not trading advice or a prediction of results. A journal records what happened; it doesn't make any trade or strategy profitable.

Related

• Statement match: check journal net against your broker statement.
• How to journal futures trades: the step-by-step setup.
• Futures position size calculator: size a trade from your stop and dollar risk.