Trade Journaling

Lance maintains a database of standout tickers going back years — 2021 top ops, 2020 top ops, 2019 top ops, all in Evernote. Even for trades he did not take, he documents the setup to build pattern recognition for the next occurrence. He argues that the database is more valuable than post-trade journaling alone because it captures opportunity recognition, not just execution. Reviewing what you saw but did not act on is often more instructive than reviewing what you actually traded.

Ted's journaling practice is built around a stoic principle he adapted specifically for trading: accept that the market will do whatever it wants, and only fear abnormal action. He repurposed the serenity prayer — 'grant me serenity to accept that markets will do what they want regardless of what I want' — and recites it before each session. The journal includes quotes from market wizards he rereads when struggling: Bruce Kovner's 'undertrade, undertrade, undertrade,' Livermore on patience, and the cheetah analogy from Mark Weinstein. Annie Duke's Thinking in Bets principle is woven throughout: judge decisions on process, not results.

Ted's post-trade journal includes a critical question: was this a fat pitch? All his best winners share a common characteristic — they were obvious to him in real time, not ambiguous. The PLTR gap-up, the SNDK group move, the GLD base break — these were all setups where the chart practically screamed the entry. By tracking which trades were fat pitches and which were forced, he builds a database of his own pattern recognition. The goal over time is to only swing at fat pitches and let the marginal setups pass. His focus list constraint supports this: fewer stocks seen means fewer marginal decisions, which means a higher percentage of fat pitches in the trade log.

Gon describes the two concrete changes that turned his performance around. First: reducing the intensity of revenge trading through conscious awareness — catching himself before the impulse trade fires. Second: meditation and physical journaling. He meditates daily and has filled three journal books in three years, writing with pen and paper so the lessons 'etch into the mind.' He's still working on it — the revenge trading impulse hasn't disappeared — but the frequency and intensity have dropped enough that the numbers turned positive. He's clear that he's not 'fixed,' just improving, and that's enough for the math to work.

Munger opens by saying the golden era of investing is not gone permanently, but it is genuinely harder now: valuations have risen and competition has become more intelligent, more aggressive, and more numerous. The fabulous track records of his generation were built on a rare post-war window when roughly 90% of natural stock buyers grew so discouraged that equities were left deeply undervalued — a generational opportunity that rarely repeats. He acknowledges 2008 may have been another such generational low, and notes that the Daily Journal's well-timed bank stock purchases around that period were partly accidental. He then turns to QE: the central bank interventions were necessary — without them, the world risked a revisitation of the conditions that brought Hitler to power — but they had the ironic accidental effect of bailing out the asset-rich while supposedly helping the poor.

"The opportunities that my generation had came from a period where about 90% of natural stock buyers got very discouraged about stocks. That's what created those fabulous records. It was a rare opportunity — and the inequality that came from QE wasn't malevolence, it was an accident."

When going through a losing period, Pradeep applies a four-factor diagnostic: is the setup itself flawed? Is there a process error — like accidentally entering 30,000 shares instead of 3,000? Is the market environment simply not suited to the current strategy? Or is the trader's own motivation the bottleneck — the fourth factor that can silently undermine everything else? He observes that motivation becomes harder to sustain after financial success, when the original urgency is gone and life offers other distractions. Trade journaling is essential in the early years to identify what is working and what is not; experienced traders develop intuitive awareness over time, but any major market shift or extended losing streak should trigger a return to structured trade journaling as a corrective tool.

"You can have a setup, you can have a process, you can have everything — but your own motivation goes through flows depending on your personal circumstances. If you don't have the motivation, money doesn't come automatically."

Williams describes his end-of-day routine: reviewing trades in a physical notebook — recording what he did right and wrong — placing orders for the next session, then deliberately walking away. He finds that the more he watches intraday price action, the more he second-guesses and the worse he does. Every Saturday morning he reviews weekly charts, seasonality, the Commitment of Traders report, and longer-term fundamentals to set a directional framework for the coming week. On health: Williams ran over 70 marathons, still competes in 5K races and track events, and treats physical fitness as directly connected to longevity in the markets. He cites the Framingham study's finding that lung function is the single strongest predictor of how long you will live, and uses high-intensity interval training to maintain it — reasoning that a longer career means more years of compounding.

"The more I watch it, the more I screw it up."

Ted's morning stack — reading the Daily Stoic, meditating for 12-15 minutes (transcendental or mindfulness-based), and journaling (gratitude, daily obstacles, most important task) — has been in place nearly every day for four years. He traces it to a college meditation class and to Ray Dalio's description of transcendental meditation as a core source of his own equanimity and self-awareness. The practices compound: better self-awareness reduces the chance that trading frustration bleeds into personal life, and reduces the chance that personal difficulties bleed back into trading. His father's diagnosis and death in mid-2024 tested all of it in a sustained way.

"I've learned to feel my emotions. It's always about focusing on what you can control, what you can change."

Ariel knows what he’s going to lose before he ever enters a trade — if a position is 10% of his portfolio and he’s risking a 2% stop to the low of day, the max loss is 0.2% of the portfolio. As a swing trader, you’re wrong roughly 60% of the time. The most common trades are small green, small red, and flat. There is never a big red trade because the stop is defined before entry — unless an overnight gap creates an anomaly. The home runs like HIMS or Nvidia take care of themselves: trim some into strength, trail the moving average, and let the rest ride. The best stocks in the world hold up best when the market goes down, and the weakest stocks act relatively weak even when the market is strong — this asymmetry is the core filter. Journaling is essential early on to build the data set that validates what works, but becomes less necessary once the patterns are internalized.

"As a swing trader, you’re going to be wrong like 60% of the time. The most common trades you take are small green, small red, flat trades. We never take big red. Why? Because we know exactly where we’re wrong before we even get in."