How to keep a trading journal for your futures trades?

Setting Up Your Futures Trading Journal Structure

1. Choose a consistent digital or physical format that supports timestamping, filtering, and searchability—spreadsheets or dedicated crypto journal apps are widely adopted in the futures trading community.

2. Include mandatory fields: entry time (UTC), contract symbol (e.g., BTC/USDT-PERP), direction (long/short), leverage used, entry price, exit price, position size in contracts and USD-equivalent, realized PnL, fee paid, and funding cost incurred.

3. Record your emotional state at entry and exit using a simple scale from 1 to 5—this data helps correlate psychological patterns with drawdowns or runaway wins across multiple BTC or ETH perpetual swaps.

4. Attach screenshots of order books, liquidation heatmaps, and open interest changes from platforms like Bybit or Binance at the moment of execution—these visuals serve as forensic anchors during later review sessions.

5. Log the dominant market regime observed: ranging, bullish breakout, bearish cascade, or squeeze event—tag each trade with labels such as “gamma squeeze”, “funding-driven dump”, or “basis collapse”.

Analyzing Trade Outcomes Beyond PnL

1. Calculate win rate not just by profit count but by expectancy: (average win × win rate) − (average loss × loss rate), especially critical when evaluating high-leverage ETH futures strategies with asymmetric risk profiles.

2. Track slippage separately for market orders versus limit entries—persistent negative slippage on SOL or ADA perpetuals may indicate poor timing relative to liquidity fragmentation across decentralized derivatives venues.

3. Measure time-in-trade against volatility index (e.g., BTCVOL on CryptoVol) to assess whether exits were driven by technical signals or panic amid sudden IV spikes.

4. Flag trades where stop-loss was moved prematurely—this behavior correlates strongly with overexposure during altcoin futures rallies where leverage amplifies noise.

5. Cross-reference each closed position with on-chain metrics like exchange net flow or whale wallet accumulation—discrepancies often expose false breakouts in DOGE or XRP futures.

Integrating On-Chain and Order Flow Signals

1. Note the 24-hour net inflow into centralized exchanges before entering a long on BTC quarterly futures—sustained inflows above 50k BTC often precede short-term downside in leveraged positions.

2. Record the delta between top-10 open interest concentration and total open interest—when concentration exceeds 38%, reversals in PERP markets become statistically more frequent.

3. Log NVT ratio divergence at entry: if BTC’s NVT is above 90 while funding rates remain deeply negative, long entries in inverse futures carry elevated systemic risk.

4. Capture options skew data from Deribit—extreme put/call ratios above 1.8 often coincide with sharp liquidation cascades in spot-indexed futures.

5. Document basis deviation: when the BTC perpetual funding rate diverges more than ±0.02% from the 7-day average, it frequently triggers forced liquidations within 4 hours.

Maintaining Discipline Through Journal Rituals

1. Complete all journal entries within 15 minutes of position closure—delay introduces memory bias, particularly after emotionally charged liquidations in high-beta memecoins.

2. Review every Friday using filters for specific contract types, leverage bands, and time-of-day—traders consistently lose more during Asian session rollovers on SOL futures than during US market hours.

3. Annotate failed setups with root cause tags: “overlapping resistance”, “low-volume breakout”, “exchange API latency”, or “funding arbitrage trap”.

4. Archive weekly summaries as PDFs with hash-verified timestamps—this creates immutable records useful during tax audits or platform dispute resolutions.

5. Never delete or edit raw entries—even incorrect assumptions must remain visible to preserve behavioral fidelity across trading cycles.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Can I use my exchange trade history export directly as a journal?Exchange exports lack context like intent, emotional state, and external catalysts—they serve as raw data only and require manual enrichment before becoming a functional journal.

Q: Should I record unrealized PnL for open positions?Yes—unrealized fluctuations reveal how margin pressure evolves during funding intervals and help identify premature exits triggered by floating losses.

Q: Is it necessary to log failed entry attempts?Failed entries expose pattern recognition gaps—logging them shows whether you’re chasing momentum or misreading liquidity sweeps in low-cap futures.

Q: How detailed should my reason for entry be?State the precise trigger: “BTC broke $61.2K with volume >$2.4B in 5 mins on Binance”, not “BTC looked strong”—vagueness undermines retrospective analysis.