Howdy and welcome to the RazorJournal tour!
RazorJournal is the result of decades of trading experience and not being able to find one journal that worked for us. We trade our own accounts and we understand what traders really need in a trading journal.
Our mission is to:
- Provide metrics that give you deep insights into your trading performance
- Rethink what a trading journal should be
- Cut through the noise and give you data that shows you exactly how to become a more profitable trader
- Provide a journal that is streamlined and easy to use
With that, here's how RazorJournal can help you improve your trading performance…
Get Risk-Adjusted Performance Metrics
We have found that “R” or Multiple of Risk is the best way to measure trading performance because it factors in your result, relative to the amount you risked on a trade.
So if you risked 100 pips on a Forex trade and made 200 pips, then you would have a result of +2R.
Likewise, if you risked 100 pips on a trade and you lost 100 pips, then your R would be -1R.
Most trading journals measure results in dollar amounts, pips, percentage, or similar metrics.
These metrics can be useful in certain situations.
But for most traders, you really need to measure your risk-adjusted results.
Let's say that you made $321 profit on a trade.
Great!
But did you risk $2,000 (+0.16R) to get that result? If you did, then it probably won't take too long for you to blow out your account.
However, if you risked $100 (+3.21R) to get that result, then you have a very good chance of being a consistently profitable trader.
R gives you a much better indication of how well you're trading and is at the core of our reports.
Breakdown by Account and Strategy
Some trading journals mush all of your trading results into one report. That doesn't help you understand which trading strategies are working and which ones need to be reviewed.
We give you an easy-to-read breakdown of your strategies and accounts, so you know exactly what is going on with each.
You will find this information on the RazorJournal Dashboard as soon as you login.
Ultimate Reporting Flexibility
Here's one thing that has always bugged us about a lot of the trading journals out there…
Every account in those trading journals must be synchronized to a brokerage account.
We always wondered why in the world that's necessary.
If you think about it, the only reason is to sync the account balance.
…and what does your current account balance tell you about your trading performance?
Nothing, nada…zilch.
What really matters is the percent of your account that you gain or lose on every trade, how well you are trading, and your win rate.
When you remove the need to have a matching account balance in your trading journal, you are free to track your performance across multiple broker accounts…in the same trading journal account.
…and performance is what really matters!
If you trade consistently well, then your account balance will take care of itself.
RazorJournal also helps when you want to keep a continuous track record when changing brokers, or opening a new brokerage account.
In addition, if you've ever had an automated trading journal service lose your data from a brokerage account you closed, then you understand how valuable this flexibility is.
Using Accounts and Strategies in RazorJournal provides a super flexible way to see your performance in a way that works best for you.
Sure, you could solve some of these issues by creating an Excel spreadsheet. But maybe it's time to upgrade from stuff that came from the 1990s.
…just like when you stopped wearing Hammer Pants.
Compare Backtesting, Demo and Live Trading Results to Discover Hidden Optimizations
RazorJournal allows you to create new accounts to track different steps in the trading strategy optimization process. We recommend creating new accounts every time you want to track the following:
- Live trading accounts
- Backtesting of individual trading strategies
- Demo accounts for strategies that you are forward testing
- Missed trades
- New trading ideas
- And more!
Using trading accounts and trading strategies are a simple, flexible way to break down your results to get actionable data. The more high-quality data you have, the more confidence you will have in your trading strategies.
This data can also help you uncover optimizations that may not be available from live trading data alone because you can compare your results at each step in the process.
Review Your Trading Rules Before Entering a Trade
Want to have one last look at your trading rules before you execute a trade?
Simply click on the Strategy Check icon on the New Trade screen and your trading rules for the selected strategy will pop up.
Prevent poor decisions by doing one last check before you click that buy or sell button.
Don't you wish you could do that with everything in life?
Compare Before and After Charts
Are you making a common technical analysis mistake when entering your losing trades?
Flash Cards can help you uncover it.
See the entry and exit screenshots of all your trades, and the results, to see how well you are following your trading rules.
Filter by Account, Strategy and Result (Win, Loss or Breakeven).
Click on a chart to see a magnified view.
This can also be used as a training tool to practice spotting high quality chart patterns.
Filter your trades by strategy and set Result to “Win.” This will show you all the winning trades across your live trades, backtesting trades and demo trades.
Review these charts frequently to remind yourself of what a good chart pattern looks like. This can be a great way to practice without using a trading simulator.
Too Much Emotion You Have
Yes, yes…as Yoda would say.
Trading can be very emotional. On top of that, the result of your trade can often heavily influence your opinion of the trade (I lost, therefore it was a bad trade).
We've found that it helps to take a step back from your closed trades for at least a couple of days.
This will allow the emotions attached to each trade to dissipate. When you come back to them you will be able to review each trade more objectively.
Our Follow Up Review section allows you to come back to a trade at a later time to make a more level-headed assessment of your performance.
You might be surprised at the difference between your initial rating of the trade and your Follow Up Review rating.
You may be trading better or worse than you initially thought.
Adjust accordingly.
Journal on Any Device
We firmly believe that the heyday of native apps are coming to an end.
Sure, there will still be situations where a native app makes more sense. But in the trading world, more and more companies are proving that native apps simply aren't necessary.
The future of trading is in browser-based apps.
TradingView has proven that you can have a high-quality charting and trading platform in a browser. We have proven that you can get a high-quality trading journal in a browser.
Browser-based apps are much simpler because:
- There's nothing to download
- You don't have to worry about compatibility issues
- You don't have to download a separate version for Windows, macOS, Android and iOS
- Your data is always synced
- You don't have to worry about hard drive crashes because nothing is stored on your local device
- You can still journal if you use other operating systems like Linux
- You automatically get new updates, no manual updates needed
- One license works for multiple devices
RazorJournal is for Forex, Stock, Cryptocurrency and Futures Traders
Our journal format works great for these markets.
Other markets…notsomuch.
We may add new markets in the future, but we want to be the best at a small number of things, and not mediocre and a lot of different things.
Options in particular, is a market that really requires a specialized journaling solution and is not what RazorJournal was built for.
Key Trading Questions RazorJournal Can Help You Answer
“It is not that we don't know the right answers, it is just that we don't ask the right questions.”
– Tony Robbins
How Much Profit am I Missing Out on After My Trades Close?
This is one of the key questions that we wanted to answer in some of our trading strategies, but there wasn't an easy way to do it.
Sure, you could build a spreadsheet, but that's really clunky, prone to mistakes and can easily be lost if your hard drive crashes.
That's why we created our proprietary MaxR metric.
This metric shows you how far your trade could have gone, if you didn't move the stop loss and you just let it run.
Simply enter the MaxR price when you update your journal entries and RazorJournal will automatically calculate your MaxR.
When you see that your MaxR for specific strategies start to group around certain Rs, that can give you clues as to where you should set your take profit levels.
In this example, let's say that you are currently targeting 1R with your profit target. You may be afraid to stretch your profit target to anything more than 1R because you don't know how that will affect your win rate.
But if you use our MaxR Analysis, the data shows that you could possibly target up to 2R while maintaining a similar win rate. You could also test stretching your profit target to between 2R and 3R because your win rate would probably be about 40% but your profit would be much higher.
Like anything else, test this before trading it in your live account.
Are There Certain Times of Day That I Shouldn't Trade?
The Analysis Detail report will break down your trades by time of day entered to see if there are any correlations between entry time and winning percentage.
You can also analyze:
- Day of the week
- Chart timeframe
Is There a Symbol That I Should Stop Trading?
RazorJournal breaks out your trading results by symbol to see if there are markets that you should not be trading.
If this is the case, then you can do some simple addition by subtraction. Stop trading symbols that are consistently having a negative impact on your bottom line .
How Can I Stop Missing Profitable Trades?
Drink more coffee.
Just kidding.
If you seem to be missing a lot of profitable trades, then we suggest creating a new account called “Missed Trades.”
Then track all of the trades you missed in this account.
Sure, there's going to be a bit of hindsight bias when you use this method. You can overcome hindsight bias by having very exact rules on when you enter a trade.
Even if there is hindsight bias in your missed trades, you can still get some very valuable insights into how to stop missing out on these opportunities.
For example, maybe most of your missed trades setup at a time when you have TPS report meetings at work. Or maybe your best trading opportunties happen on the days when you have to pick your kids up from competitive dog grooming class.
Once you can identify these patterns, you can figure out ways to compensate.
If there's no way that you can be available for these trades, then you can look for other strategies that will fit into your lifestyle.
This beats banging your head against a brick wall without a helmet, wondering why your trading strategies are not working.
Should I Use My Intuition or Just Stick to the Rules?
You can only build true intuition by first having a profitable trading plan, then practicing for hours and hours. Even if you put in the work, you may still wonder if you should listen to your intuition or just stick to the rules of your trading strategy.
RazorJournal can help you figure that out.
When you enter a trade, there is place to enter your Confidence Score for the trade. The Confidence Score is a measurement of your confidence that the trade will work out as planned, at the time you open the trade.
A score of 1 is not confident, and 4 is extremely confident, that the trade will be profitable. We use a 1-4 scale because it simplifies the rating process.
- 1-2 is negative and gives you 2 degrees of confidence
- 3-4 is positive and gives you 2 degrees of confidence
This is optional, but if you choose to use it, you can get a better feel for if your intuitions are generally right or wrong.
Should I Tighten My Stop to Capture More Profits?
Maybe.
RazorJournal tracks your Maximum Adverse Excursion in R (MAER), so you can see how far price goes against you on your winning trades.
If your average MAER is significantly less than 1R, then there may be an opportunity to tighten your stop.
For example, in the Live – FX account below, winning trades have an average MAER of -0.31R. This means that price only goes about 1/3 of the stop loss distance against the trader, before becoming profitable.
So a trader with this data may want to test moving their stop loss to 0.8R or 80% of where they would normally set their stop loss. If that works with their trading style, this one simple tweak can potentially add thousands of dollars in extra profits to their bottom line.
Just be sure to retest your trading strategy before risking real money.
Am I Closing My Trades Late (or Early)?
Your Maximum Favorable Excursion in R (MFER) is measured on all trades and gives you how far price went in your favor, before the trade was closed.
This can give you clues as to where your first profit target should be, in order to improve your win rate.
You might be closing your trades too early or too late. Either way, this is a simple change that can make you a more profitable trader.
Again, test this thoroughly before changing your trading strategy.
How Often am I Moving My Stop Loss in the Wrong Direction?
If a loss is more than -1R, you are moving your stop in a negative direction and adding risk to your trades.
That's usually a recipe for disaster.
RazorJournal highlights these trades in red on your trade blotter, so they stand out.
A Final Reminder
Keep in mind that most of these metrics are only useful if you have a significant amount of data. Therefore, you probably shouldn't make trading decisions based on less than 30 data points.
However, if you see patterns emerge after 30 trades, then you might be on to something. If you have 100 trades or more, then you can be much more confident in the results.
To get started with RazorJournal, go here: