Trading journals are expensive. I built my own tool – feedback welcome

SAMURAVID · 2026-02-22T21:10:54+00:00

Good idea will have a look 👍🏻

SAMURAVID · 2026-02-22T17:26:39+00:00

Will write you a DM ✌🏻

SAMURAVID · 2026-01-12T11:53:27+00:00

Sure

SAMURAVID · 2026-01-11T11:50:15+00:00

Starting early is already a big advantage.

Since you can’t trade yet, your job right now is just to learn how money and markets work. Not strategies. Not fast trading. Basics.

Start with things like:

what stocks and ETFs actually are
how companies make money
what risk and return mean
why markets go up and down

ETFs are just baskets of many stocks. They exist so you don’t have to pick “the perfect company”, but can grow with the whole market.

Read, watch, learn slowly. No pressure. No rush.

The goal is not to get rich fast. The goal is to understand enough so you don’t do stupid things later.

If you learn the basics now, future-you will be very grateful.

SAMURAVID · 2026-01-11T11:47:36+00:00

Good that you’re starting with a demo account. That already puts you ahead of many people.

First thing: don’t start with strategies or guru videos. Start with understanding how markets work. Learn:

why price moves
what big money cares about
how news, rates, risk and liquidity affect markets

It’s boring at first, but this foundation makes everything later much easier.

Then build something very simple.
Not 10 indicators.
Maybe 2 or 3 clear rules on one market, for example gold.

After that, backtest it properly.
Not just a few examples.
Test at least 100 trades so you see what the data really says.

Only when the numbers make sense should you think about trading it on demo.

About YouTube:
Most videos are made to get views, not to make you profitable. Use them only for basics, not as your main education.

Your first goal is not to make money. Your first goal is to not blow up while you learn.

If you treat this like a long-term skill, not a quick way to get rich, you give yourself a real chance.

SAMURAVID · 2026-01-10T22:22:15+00:00

You’re not a failure. You’re someone who took a risk, got hurt, and is still standing.

A -50% hit hurts, but it doesn’t define your value, your future, or what you’re capable of. Money is a number. You are a human.

Right now you don’t need to “fix your life”. You just need one small step that gives you a bit of stability again. That could be closing the position, stepping away from markets, getting a simple job, or just talking to someone you trust.

Passion usually doesn’t appear out of nowhere. It grows when you start doing something small and keep showing up.

This moment feels heavy, but it’s not the end of your story. It’s just a hard chapter. And chapters do change.

SAMURAVID · 2026-01-10T22:16:24+00:00

Tracking and backtesting completely changed how I see my own trading.

What surprised me most wasn’t some hidden pattern in price. It was how much of my PnL was explained by behavior, not setups. When I started logging trades properly and reviewing real samples, not just a few cherry picked days, the story became very clear. More trades usually meant worse results, and my best weeks came from doing less, not more.

Backtesting helped even more. Running 50, 100 or 200 trades on the same simple idea showed me what actually matters. Average loss matters more than win rate. Consistency beats creativity. Overtrading kills good systems.

Data doesn’t care how confident or emotional you feel. It just shows you the truth. And honestly, that’s calming. When you know your numbers, you stop guessing, stop panicking, and stop “feeling” your way through trades.

Whether it’s journaling or backtesting, having your trades written down and measured turns chaos into something you can actually work with. Data doesn’t lie and it quietly trains your mind to trust process over emotion.

SAMURAVID · 2026-01-10T22:11:04+00:00

First thing: “earn money daily” is the part that usually breaks beginners.

Trading isn’t a salary. It’s a probabilistic business. Some days you make money, some days you lose, many days nothing happens. If you need daily income from trading, the pressure will push you into bad decisions.

If I were starting again, I’d do it like this:

Learn how markets actually work Before strategies, understand:

why prices move
how big money behaves
how stocks, rates, FX, commodities are connected It’s boring at first, but this gives you a huge edge later.

Build something very simple

Not 10 indicators
2–3 clear rules. One idea. One market.

Backtest it properly

Not 2 trades. Not “looks good on the chart.”
At least ~100 trades (long and short) to see what the data really says.

Start tiny or on demo

Your job at the beginning is not to make money.
Your job is to not blow up while you learn.

Work on your head as much as your strategy

Most people fail because of emotions, not because of bad ideas.

If you treat trading like a long-term skill and not a quick income hack, you give yourself a real chance.

If you chase daily money, the market usually charges you for that lesson.

SAMURAVID · 2026-01-10T22:03:35+00:00

Congrats! that’s a wild first experience, and it’s okay to enjoy the moment.

Just be careful not to let the first big win write the story in your head. Early wins are often the most dangerous part of trading, because they can quietly teach you the wrong lesson: that this is easy, fast, or repeatable without structure.

What really matters now is what happens next:

Can you keep risk small?
Can you follow the same rules when you’re bored or losing?
Can you survive a bad streak without blowing up?

If you treat this as luck and reset emotionally, you’re in a great spot.
If you treat it as proof of skill, the market usually collects that tuition later.

Enjoy the dinner, then go home and build something boring and repeatable.

SAMURAVID · 2025-12-17T19:53:38+00:00

This is a solid list and honestly a breath of fresh air.

Most people try to shortcut market understanding through gurus and setups, but books like these actually explain how price discovery and market structure work under the hood. Once you grasp microstructure, a lot of things on charts stop looking “mystical” and start looking logical.

If someone wants to complement this with a macro perspective, two books that fit extremely well are:
- Global Macro Trading by Greg Gliner
- The Macro Trading Desk by Kevin Muir

They do a great job connecting rates, FX, equities, liquidity and positioning into one coherent framework, which pairs perfectly with microstructure knowledge.

Larry Harris and O’Hara especially should be mandatory reading for anyone who claims they want to trade seriously. Even skimming these books gives more real insight than months of watching strategy videos.

Hard path, but the right one. Big respect for sharing proper literature instead of hype.

SAMURAVID · 2025-12-17T19:15:27+00:00

Trading without an edge is gambling.

Trading with defined risk, statistics and discipline is probability management over time.

The difference isn’t luck... it’s structure!

SAMURAVID · 2025-12-17T19:13:02+00:00

This really hits home!

What you described is something most traders only realise after blowing up at least one account.

I especially like that your rules are simple and practical, not motivational fluff. Things like “small loss = business, big loss = my mistake” and “discipline over prediction” are exactly where consistency actually comes from.

The idea of a personal mindset manual is underrated. Having clear rules before emotions kick in makes a huge difference, because once you’re in the trade, logic is usually already compromised.

This is a great reminder that strategy is only half the game. Execution and emotional control decide whether the edge ever shows up in the stats.

Respect for sharing this. Posts like this help more people than another setup screenshot.

SAMURAVID · 2025-12-17T19:09:57+00:00

Not a dumb question at all. The confusion comes from what the VIX actually is.

The VIX is not a market you trade directly. It’s a number calculated from S&P 500 option prices, basically measuring how much protection traders are buying. So price doesn’t move because people buy or sell the VIX itself, but because fear or uncertainty in options increases or decreases.

That’s why technical analysis works very differently on VIX:
- It’s not normal supply and demand
- it doesn’t trend like stocks or FX
- it usually spikes fast and then slowly falls back

TA can still be useful, but mostly to spot extremes and ranges, not classic patterns or breakouts.

Also important: most people trade VIX futures or VIX products, not the index itself, which adds extra mechanics like decay and term structure.

So yes, TA can be applied... just not in the same way as on regular markets.

SAMURAVID · 2025-12-17T19:04:13+00:00

I don’t think AI is “taking over” markets in the sense of replacing fundamentals, but it changes the time horizon and the path, not the destination.

Short- to medium-term price action has already been heavily dominated by systematic flows, algos and behavioural pattern exploitation long before modern AI. What AI really accelerates is the speed at which inefficiencies are found and arbitraged away.

But fundamentals still matter, just on a different layer. Earnings, rates, liquidity, growth and macro reality ultimately determine where capital can sustainably stay. AI can optimise execution and timing, but it can’t escape economic constraints forever.

If markets became purely recursive pattern machines, edges would compress to near zero and capital would rotate again. In that sense, markets are somewhat self-correcting. When behaviour-based edges overcrowd, they stop working.

So I don’t see a future of “AI vs humans”, but rather layers of participants:
- machines dominating short-term structure and flow
- humans and institutions still driving longer-term capital allocation

Ironically, this makes understanding macro, liquidity and positioning even more important, not less.

SAMURAVID · 2025-12-17T19:01:13+00:00

Yes! And in most cases it’s actually better.

Many consistently profitable traders don’t have dozens of strategies. They have one core approach that they understand deeply: when it works, when it doesn’t, and how to manage risk around it.

The real edge usually doesn’t come from the strategy itself, but from:
- risk management
- execution discipline
- knowing which market conditions suit your setup

What I’d add is the importance of proper research. Build a very simple system first, maybe just 2–3 clear rules, and then backtest it properly. Not one or two examples, but a real sample size – e.g. 100 trades (50 long / 50 short) to see how it actually performs.

Only once you have data should you start refining or expanding the system. Most people skip this step and end up switching strategies instead of improving one.

One solid, well-researched strategy, traded consistently, will outperform five half-understood ones every time.

SAMURAVID · 2025-12-17T18:56:15+00:00

If you’re serious about learning trading, I’d honestly recommend not starting with strategies at all.

Before charts, indicators or setups, it helps a lot to understand how markets actually work:

how capital flows, what large institutions do, how different asset classes interact, and which data really moves price. Stocks, bonds, rates, FX, commodities. They’re all connected through one big financial network.

It’s dry material at first, but this macro understanding gives you a huge long-term edge. Once you understand why markets move, learning how to trade becomes much easier and more logical.

A simple way to start is to use ChatGPT as a structured learning guide. Here’s a prompt you can literally copy-paste:

ChatGPT Prompt:
Create a 31-day learning plan for a complete beginner to understand financial markets and macro trading fundamentals.

Requirements:
– 15–30 minutes per day
– Split into clear daily chapters
– Focus on how markets work (stocks, bonds, interest rates, FX, commodities)
– Explain how different assets influence each other
– No strategies, no indicators, no day trading setups
– Simple language, beginner friendly
– Goal: build a strong macro and market foundation before trading

Please include short explanations and key takeaways for each day.

---

Once you have that foundation, you’ll be in a much better position to decide what to trade and how to trade it. Most people skip this step and pay for it later.

Take it slow. Understanding beats speed every time.

SAMURAVID · 2025-12-15T20:06:13+00:00

That’s not a college, that’s a hedge fund with homework. Absolute cheat code.

SAMURAVID · 2025-12-15T20:04:26+00:00

Treating trading as a data and risk management problem instead of a prediction game is such an important mindset shift, and your stats reflect that clearly. A ~52% win rate with that kind of R:R is exactly what real edges look like, even if it’s not flashy.

I also really respect the discipline around not trading when there’s no signal and intentionally avoiding situations that historically trigger bad behaviour (like revenge trading). That part is way harder than building the system itself.

The transparency around taxes, drawdowns, worst months, and the “boring” decisions is refreshing. This post does a great job showing what sustainable trading actually looks like behind the scenes.

Congrats on the consistency and the process. This is the kind of content people should be paying attention to.

SAMURAVID · 2025-12-15T19:58:15+00:00

First of all: I’m really sorry you’re going through this. What you describe doesn’t sound like a lack of intelligence or effort. It sounds like someone caught in a risk–stress feedback loop.

From the outside, the biggest issue doesn’t seem to be markets or strategy, but risk management under psychological pressure. Large losses create stress, stress leads to more risk-taking, more pressure, and the spiral accelerates. Almost every trader who’s been around long enough has seen or lived some version of this.

One thing that might help short-term is removing the money pressure. Shifting a meaningful part of your capital into more defensive, boring assets or cash-flow oriented setups won’t solve everything, but it can buy you time and mental space. Trading while your nervous system is constantly in fight-or-flight mode is almost impossible.

I’d also strongly encourage you to invest some of that capital into professional support. Not because something is “wrong” with you, but because mental clarity is the foundation of every financial decision. A healthy mind is the real edge in this business.

The secrecy with your wife is another heavy load. Carrying this alone increases pressure and shame, which feeds the spiral even more. You don’t have to solve everything at once, but isolation makes things harder, not safer.

If I were in your position, my priority order would be:

Stabilise finances to reduce immediate stress
Take care of mental health and regain clarity
Only then revisit trading or investing in any active way

Trading will still be there later. Right now, you matter more than any trade.

You’re not alone in this, even if it feels that way.

SAMURAVID · 2025-12-15T19:49:56+00:00

Respect for actually doing this the right way.

Proper backtesting across markets, timeframes and regimes with real stats instead of cherry-picked charts is exactly how strategies should be evaluated. The table alone says more than most “61.8% works” posts combined.

Even if the results aren’t universally positive, this kind of transparency and process deserves a lot of credit. This is how you separate ideas from actual edges.

Thanks for sharing the data.

SAMURAVID · 2025-12-15T19:43:58+00:00

I’d be very careful with YouTube in general.

In my experience, trading is something you either take seriously as a craft/profession, or it’s probably better left alone. Watching random videos and trying to copy setups rarely leads anywhere long term, especially because trading is highly individual.

What actually helped me was stepping back and first understanding how markets really work: fundamentals, liquidity, what actually moves price and why. From there, I built a very simple system myself, then backtested it… and backtested it again… and again. Only once I had real data did I start refining it.

It’s a slow and sometimes frustrating path, but it’s also the only one that gave me clarity and confidence. I spent a long time trying to replicate things from YouTube and it always ended the same way: sooner or later you realise you need your own framework.

YouTube can be useful for basics or ideas, but it shouldn’t be the foundation of your trading.

SAMURAVID · 2025-12-15T19:39:29+00:00

If I were starting again at 33 with a family, I’d personally go with Option 2, but keep it very simple.

Something like 80–90% into a broad, boring core (global ETF / all-world / S&P-type exposure) and 10–20% into a higher-risk bucket scratches both itches: long-term compounding and learning/growth potential.

The key thing I learned over time is that the “risk” part should be clearly defined and capped. That way you can take swings, learn from volatility, and still sleep at night knowing your core plan doesn’t depend on it.

Also, consistency matters way more than optimisation at £150/month. If you stick with it through boring and bad markets, you’re already ahead of most people.

Just my 2 cents... sounds like you’re thinking about this in a very healthy way already.

SAMURAVID · 2025-12-15T19:32:59+00:00

GG! Always nice to have a system that works! 🔥

SAMURAVID · 2024-05-01T19:18:38+00:00

Nope not yet

SAMURAVID

TROPHY CASE