Seeking Insights for Options Trading Journal

Dear Fellow Traders,

I am in the process of creating a comprehensive options trading journal and would greatly appreciate your insights and experiences to enrich its content.

If you could take a moment to share the key questions you believe should be included in an options trading journal, it would be immensely helpful.

  1. Trade Details: What specific information do you always document when entering and exiting an options trade?

  2. Risk Management Metrics: What metrics or calculations related to risk do you think are crucial to include in a trading journal? (e.g., maximum loss, risk-reward ratio, etc.)

  3. Market Conditions: How do you document the overall market conditions at the time of each trade? What factors do you find most relevant to record?

  4. Post-Trade Analysis: What questions do you ask yourself during post-trade analysis, and how do you track the lessons learned for future improvement?

Your insights will not only contribute to the development of my options trading journal but also serve as a valuable resource for the wider trading community. Feel free to share as much or as little as you’re comfortable with.

Happy trading!
Raj

Raj,
I hope you are still working on the above options trading journal. I’ve been a full-time trader for several years, and been unable to find a reliable paid platform that correctly translates trade data consistently (beyond a trade vertical). If you know how to create a program that can correctly import from excel; assign and group trade leg(s) to an option spread (based on probability (i.e. using time of execution within 1 min)) them into the correct trade spreads, I can show you many traders who would use it

Regarding your questions -
Trade Details:
Either: whether the position is a
-Buy to open or sell to close
-QTY
-Type (put/call)
-Date Open/Closed/Expiration Date
-Strike
-Spread Type (Vertical, Butterfly, Iron Condor, etc.)
-Trade price

  • Closing Price
    -P/L
    -Date Closed

I would be happy to colaborate further and provide additional insight to the above, however I dont want to spend the time in case this is no longer active I’m responding to a posting in 1998!
-Jack

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