Blog · Oct 27, 2026

What to write in a trading journal: 40 questions and filled-in futures examples

Write down what you planned, what you did and why, the net result after fees, and one thing to repeat or change. That is the whole job of a trading journal entry, and everything below is a way to do those four things well.

Most traders start with entry, exit and P&L, then stall, because a row of prices tells you little a week later. This guide fills in the rest: first the fields every entry needs, including a few only futures traders need; then 40 questions grouped by time of day; then six filled-in futures entries you can copy, a tag list, a review routine and a printable worksheet.

It works the same way on a live account, a sim account or a prop firm account. The questions don't change. Only a couple of the numbers you watch do.

The short answer: what every entry needs

A useful entry has three layers. Keep them apart, because they come from different places and you write them at different times.

The facts (from the fill, not memory)

The facts come from your platform or broker export, never from memory, which rounds losses down and wins up. Record the contract and its month (for example MNQZ26, not just "Nasdaq"), the side, the number of contracts, the entry and exit time in Chicago time, the entry and exit price, the round-turn fees, and the net P&L after those fees. Easiest is an export from your platform pasted or imported, not typed.

The plan (written before entry)

The plan is what you intended before you clicked. Write the setup name, the stop and target in ticks, and the planned dollar risk. Planned dollar risk is the stop distance in ticks, times the tick value, times the number of contracts. It's the number that makes R possible. R is your result divided by what you planned to risk, so a trade that loses exactly the planned amount is −1R and a trade that makes twice the planned risk is +2R. The risk-reward calculator turns a stop and target into R. Without a planned risk written down before the entry, you can't calculate R honestly afterwards. To turn a dollar risk and a stop into a contract count, use the futures position size calculator.

The judgment (written after exit)

The judgment is your read once the trade is closed: plan followed, yes or no; a mistake tag, if any; one word for how you felt; and one lesson. One honest line beats a paragraph of excuses.

Here is the whole set on one screen. The example values are illustrative.

Why futures entries need a few extra fields

Generic templates are built for stocks or forex. Futures add four details that change your numbers.

Ticks and contracts, not pips or shares

Futures move in ticks, and each contract has a fixed dollar value per tick. On the four equity index contracts most day traders use, one point is four ticks:

Source: CME Group contract specifications, as listed on Tiedbook's tick table. Write stops and targets in ticks, then convert to dollars with the tick value and contract count. A 40-tick stop on 2 MNQ is 40 × $0.50 × 2 = $40.00. The same 40-tick stop on 1 NQ is 40 × $5.00 = $200.00. If you'd rather not do it by hand, the futures tick value calculator does the conversion.

Round-turn fees belong in every entry

Commissions, exchange fees and platform fees are charged on every contract, in and out. Record them as one round-turn amount per contract, because that's what a full trade costs. In this article we use illustrative round-turn amounts of $1.30 per micro contract and $4.50 per E-mini contract. Your real numbers depend on your broker, platform and account, so check them with the futures fee calculator or your statement.

A 2-tick win on 1 MES is 2 × $1.25 = $2.50 gross. With an illustrative $1.30 round turn, the net is $1.20, so fees took 52% of the win. A journal that records only gross P&L will make a scalping style look far better than it is.

The trade date is not always the calendar date

The CME equity index session for a trade date opens at 5:00 p.m. Chicago time the evening before. A trade at 6:30 p.m. Chicago on Tuesday belongs to Wednesday's trade date, and that's the date your statement puts it on. If your journal files it under Tuesday, your daily totals will never match the statement. Write times in Chicago time and file trades by session. The session day guide explains the cut-off in detail.

Contract month and roll week

Equity index futures expire quarterly, in March, June, September and December (month codes H, M, U and Z). Around each roll, volume moves to the next contract, and the two trade at different prices. Record the full symbol, such as MESZ26 or MESH27, and tag trades taken during roll week.

40 questions to answer in your trading journal

These trading journal questions, prompts and ideas turn a list of fills into something you can learn from. You don't need all 40 every day. The after-exit block is the core; the rest are there when a trade or a day needs more thought.

Before the session (8)

Before the entry (8)

During the trade (6)

After the exit (10)

End of session (4)

End of week (4)

Question 34 deserves a note. If the day's journal total doesn't match the broker statement, something is missing or wrong: a partial fill, an unrecorded fee, or a trade filed on the wrong session date. Find it the same day. The statement match guide walks through the usual causes.

How detailed should a trading journal be?

Most entries should be short. A few should be long.

The 60-second minimum

Every trade gets the facts, a yes or no on the plan, and one line. If the facts come from an import, that's about a minute per trade: short enough to keep doing on bad days, which are the ones you most need on paper.

When to write more

Write more when the trade teaches you something you'd otherwise lose. That means any rule break, win or lose; anything that surprised you, such as a fast move through your stop or a fill far from your price; and the day's largest win and largest loss. For these, answer the during-the-trade questions too and save a screenshot of the chart at entry and at exit.

What not to write

Skip hindsight stories that start with "I should have known." Skip predictions about tomorrow; they belong in the pre-session plan. Skip insults aimed at yourself; "idiot trade" can't be counted, but "moved stop away" can. And don't save P&L screenshots without the plan next to them.

Filled-in trading journal examples (futures)

All six examples use illustrative prices and illustrative round-turn fees of $1.30 per micro contract and $4.50 per E-mini contract. Planned risk is the stop distance times the tick value times the contracts, without fees. R is the net result after fees divided by that planned risk. The math is shown so you can check it.

Example 1: an MNQ stop-out done right (−1.09R after fees)

A good trade with a bad result. Note that the loss is 1.09R, not 1R: slippage and fees added 9% to the planned loss, which is worth knowing when you size.

Example 2: an MES winner that broke a rule

Winners like this reward the rule break. Tagging it shows you later how often "size above max" happens and what it costs when it doesn't work.

Example 3: an ES scratch that isn't flat

A gross-only journal calls this trade zero. The statement calls it −$4.50. Record it the way the statement does.

Example 4: a no-trade day

Log no-trade days. They show whether you can wait.

Example 5: a weak entry rewritten, before and after

Before: "NQ short, lost, market was choppy, should have waited."

After:

The first version can't be counted or checked. The second can.

Example 6: a five-line end-of-session recap

This recap covers three illustrative MNQ trades of 2 contracts each, with $40.00 planned risk per trade: Example 1 (−$43.60), a winner that hit its 80-tick target (80 × $0.50 × 2 = $80.00 gross, less $2.60 fees, so +$77.40, or $77.40 ÷ $40.00 = +1.935R) and a scratch at entry ($0.00 gross, less $2.60 fees, so −$2.60, or −0.065R).

1. Trades: 3. Gross +$39.00 (−$41.00 + $80.00 + $0.00), fees $7.80, net +$31.20.
2. R for the day: −1.09 + 1.935 − 0.065 = +0.78R.
3. Statement net +$31.20. Tied to the cent.
4. Best decision: holding the winner to target. Worst: the scratch was a late entry.
5. Tomorrow's one focus: no entries more than 4 ticks past the opening-range level.

Tags: turn what you write into something you can count

Notes explain a trade; tags let you count trades. "How much did I lose to chasing?" only has an answer if every chase was tagged the same way.

Setup tags

Examples: opening-range break, VWAP reclaim, failed breakout. Use your own names, the same way every time, one name per repeatable pattern.

Mistake tags

A starting set: chase, moved stop away, size above max, traded after daily stop, averaged down, revenge entry. Each describes an action, not a feeling, so you can tell whether it happened. To log the state behind them and cost each pattern, see the trading psychology journal.

Context tags

Overnight (Globex), RTH open, midday, close, news day, roll week. They answer questions like "do my midday trades lose money?"

Keep each group under about 10 tags

Long lists split trades into groups too small to tell you anything. Merge tags that mean the same thing.

Live, sim and prop accounts: same questions, separate books

Sim. Journal sim trades exactly like live, fees included. A sim record without fees looks better than live trading ever can.

Live. On a live account, the broker statement is the referee. Tie each day's journal net to it. If the two don't match, the journal is wrong until you find out why.

Prop evaluation or funded account. Add two numbers to your pre-session questions: how far you are from the daily loss limit, and how far you are from the trailing drawdown. Write both in dollars before the first trade. The trailing drawdown guide explains how that distance moves. More on journaling eval and funded accounts.

Keep a separate book for each account. Mixing sim and live, or two prop accounts with different rules, hides the differences you want to see.

Reviewing what you wrote

After each session (5 minutes)

Answer the four end-of-session questions. Tie the day to your statement. Write tomorrow's one focus where you'll see it before the open.

Weekly (20–30 minutes)

Sort the week's trades into a grid:

Then find the repeated mistake and the best-executed setup, and write one rule for next week. Just one, so you can tell whether it worked. For a step-by-step version, use a 30-minute weekly trading review template.

When the numbers start to mean something

A handful of trades tells you very little. A rule of thumb many traders use is to wait for about 30 or more trades of a setup before changing its size or dropping it. That's a working habit, not a statistical guarantee; small samples can still mislead you. Once you have enough trades, the expectancy calculator turns your win rate and average win and loss into an expected result per trade. For what to calculate from your entries and when each number can be trusted, see trading journal metrics.

Where a journal like Tiedbook fits

You can do everything above in a spreadsheet, and the futures trading journal template is a good place to start. A journal app removes the typing and the arithmetic.

Tiedbook imports trade exports from Tradovate, NinjaTrader and Rithmic, and syncs TopstepX read-only with your API key. Other CSV files come in through a column map, so the facts come from the fills, not memory. Fees and net P&L are recorded per trade. Each trade is filed on its CME session date, with the roll at 5:00 p.m. Chicago by default. The reconcile screen compares each day's journal net with your statement net and shows the difference to the cent.

Every trade takes a note and tags. The Mistakes screen flags revenge entries, trades after your daily stop, oversized trades, widened stops and averaging down, based on rules you set. The Edges report splits results by time of day, weekday, setup tag and hold time, and greys out any group with fewer than 30 trades.

Tiedbook can show results in R using one fixed dollar risk you set in Settings, but it doesn't store a planned stop for each trade, so write each trade's planned risk and R in the note.

Printable trading journal worksheet

Copy this into a notebook or spreadsheet: one per-trade card per trade, one pre-session block per day, one weekly block per week. A ready-made version is on the futures trading journal template page.

Frequently asked questions

What should a trading journal include?

At minimum: the contract and month, side, size, entry and exit time and price, round-turn fees and net P&L; the plan you made before entry, including the stop, target and planned dollar risk; and a short judgment after the exit, meaning whether you followed the plan, a mistake tag, one emotion and one lesson.

Should I fill in my trading journal before or after the trade?

Both. Write the plan before you enter: setup, stop, target and planned risk. Written afterwards, a plan tends to bend toward what actually happened. Write the facts and the judgment after the exit, while the trade is fresh. Leave the longer review for the end of the session.

Should I journal every trade, including winners and scratches?

Yes. Winners show which rule breaks are being rewarded, and scratches show what fees cost you. Leaving either out makes your record look better than your statement. If time is short, give every trade the 60-second minimum.

What is R, and why record risk before the trade?

R is your result divided by the dollar amount you planned to risk. A trade that loses the planned amount is −1R. R lets you compare a 1-contract trade with a 5-contract trade. It only works if the planned risk was written before the entry. Worked out after the exit, it's a guess.

Which emotions should I track?

Pick from a short fixed list, such as calm, confident, impatient, anxious, frustrated or bored, and write one word before the entry and one after the exit. A fixed list makes patterns countable over weeks. The goal isn't to judge the feeling. It's to see whether some feelings come before your off-plan trades. For a fuller method, with labels written before entry and rule breaks costed in dollars and R, see how to keep a trading psychology journal.

How often should I review my journal?

Five minutes after every session to tie the day to your statement and set tomorrow's focus, then 20 to 30 minutes once a week to sort trades by plan and result, find the repeated mistake and set one rule.

How many trades before the journal tells me anything?

A common rule of thumb is about 30 or more trades of the same setup before you change its size or drop it. That's a working habit, not a guarantee. Fewer trades can easily mislead you. Until then, use the journal mainly to check whether you followed your rules.

Should I take screenshots of my trades?

Yes, if they show the decision. Take a chart screenshot at entry with your stop and target marked, and one at exit, and keep them with the written plan for that trade. A chart at entry shows what you saw when you clicked, which memory rewrites quickly. A screenshot of the P&L alone teaches nothing, and screenshots don't replace the facts: the prices, fees and net still come from your export or statement.

Which day does an evening futures trade belong to?

To the next trade date. For CME equity index futures such as ES, MES, NQ and MNQ, the session for a trade date opens at 5:00 p.m. Chicago time the evening before. A trade at 6:30 p.m. Chicago on Tuesday belongs to Wednesday's trade date, and a Sunday evening trade belongs to Monday. Your broker statement uses the trade date, so file the trade there too. Other contracts can have different hours, so check the session times for what you trade.

What should a trading journal measure?

Start with net P&L after fees and each trade's result in R. Once you have enough trades, add expectancy, profit factor and maximum drawdown, and track how often you followed your plan from the first trade. Read the outcome numbers per setup, and only after about 30 or more trades of that setup, since smaller samples can easily mislead you.

Does journaling really matter?

Journaling won't make a losing approach profitable, and no one can promise it will improve your results. What it does is record behaviour you can't see otherwise: how often you break your rules, what fees really cost and which setups you execute well. What you do with that record is up to you.

Trading futures involves substantial risk of loss and isn't suitable for everyone. The examples in this article are illustrations, not trade recommendations.

Related

• How to journal futures trades: the step-by-step routine for setting up and keeping a futures journal.
• Futures trading journal template: a ready-made template with the fields from this article.
• Expectancy calculator: turn your win rate and average win and loss into an expected result per trade.