Why I Keep Notes
The habit of writing down what you see, what you thought, and what actually happened.
Most traders skip the writing part. That’s a mistake.
Not because journaling is a magic solution, but because memory is unreliable under pressure. You’ll remember the trades that worked and reframe the ones that didn’t. Writing it down before you know the outcome is the only way to audit your actual thinking — not the story you tell yourself later.
A note doesn’t need to be long. It needs to capture three things: what you saw, what you thought it meant, and what you decided to do about it.
That’s it. Review those notes a month later and patterns emerge. The mistakes become visible. So do the good calls — and more importantly, whether the good calls were actually good thinking or just good luck.
Luck and skill look identical in real time. Only the notes can tell them apart.