# Trading Journal

*Trading & Technical Analysis — Finicade finance glossary*

A trading journal records every trade with its reasoning, size, outcome and the state you were in when you took it. Its value is defeating hindsight bias: memory rewrites losing trades as unlucky and winning ones as skilful, and only a contemporaneous record shows the pattern. Most traders discover from their own journal that a small number of impulsive trades account for most of their losses.

**Also known as:** trade log, trading diary

**Related terms:** [Expectancy](https://finicade.com/glossary/expectancy), [Position Sizing](https://finicade.com/glossary/position-sizing), [Behavioral Biases](https://finicade.com/glossary/behavioral-biases), [Backtesting](https://finicade.com/glossary/backtesting), [Paper Trading](https://finicade.com/glossary/paper-trading)

Source: https://finicade.com/glossary/trading-journal