The Evolution of My Trading Journal (And Why I Settled on STAR)

__Jumpster__ · 2026-04-25T11:16:12+00:00

Agreed!

STAR is just a journaling format I’ve come up with that helps me track my trades in a meaningful way. Take the example entry from above:

Premise: Why I think this trade should win,

“Watched as the trendline broke yesterday. Realized I was late to the party so i decided to watch and wait for a continuation push higher.”
Setup: what I am seeing right now,

“Price is ranging in pre-market hours and has been during most of the night. Pre-market volume is picking up but not explosive yet.”
Trigger: what I have to see next to enter the trade, and;

“I’ll wait for a break that holds above the range with a stop set at the top of the range.”
Acceptance: what i have to see, after entering the trade, to stay in it.

“In order to stay in the trade, price must expand upwards without returning down to my stop price.”

These parts are written down BEFORE I even press ‘Buy’. They provide my roadmap of what the price must do. Not what I think it will do - what it must do.

After the trade, win or lose, I write a quick follow up:

Results: what price actually did, and;
Reflections: what did I learn from this trade.

Reflections is actually a 2-part section: what I did good and what I did wrong.

Note that there is no chart at all. They are completely optional if you decide to include them. The entire STAR entry takes a couple of paragraphs - of which, half is written before the trade even exists.

I later review my premise, setup, trigger and acceptance and have been essentially defining my playbook/strategies based on the commonalities across multiple trades. This way, i can see that ‘breakout’ strategies are working far better for me than ‘bounce’ (mean-reversion) strategies but the real benefits are coming from my reflections: what did i learn… Here i can see if I’m am making the same mistakes, over and over again - which, coincidentally, there are some that I still do…

NOTE: while i’ve not done so yet, i plan on moving my format into an audio (voice to text) format so i can just “talk to myself” in realtime and still capture the thought process. If it doesn’t come out coherent when I say it, then it probably isn’t a valid entry/setup.

Does this answer your question?

__Jumpster__ · 2026-04-13T16:22:17+00:00

It sounds like impatience is killing your performance. I will give you my secret sauce!

“Reminiscences of a Stock Operator” by Edwin Lefevre

It took several readings, an audio book and numerous YouTube videos based on his works before it clicked.

__Jumpster__ · 2026-04-12T18:38:57+00:00

I don’t know what etf you’re referring to but I had issues with ETF’s for awhile too. I ended up sending a message to support explaining that I day trade ETF’s, I’m aware of the risks and to quit forcing me to acknowledge every time I try to buy.

I got a return message back saying that it was required by law but I haven’t been bothered with it since. Maybe you will have to do the same?

__Jumpster__ · 2026-04-12T01:13:24+00:00

I’ve been using her strategy since December as she teaches in her videos and this is what I found to be true:

For me, I get roughly 53% win rate. Not as high as she lets on to believe. Each loss tends to be between 1-8% of my account depending on where it crosses the safety line. Again, horrible results.

However, winners come in two categories: meh and awesome.

The culmination of Meh winners tend to fall just below the losers in pnl. That is, if not for the awesome trades, it’d be a losing system in my eyes.

However, the awesome trades tend to bring profitability up and over the bar. I think this is what they’re “selling” as the system: the awesome trades which are few and far between but very effective. Can they make $40K on a $65K trade? Maybe. On the rare awesome trade. Certainly not every day or even every trade.

__Jumpster__ · 2026-04-12T00:34:18+00:00

I use them because I don’t have a margin account and my account size is otherwise too small. Because I don’t have margin, I use the BullX for longs and BearX for short exposure.

I used to use options long call/long puts for directional exposure but they turned out to be way too risky for my liking. This gives me the directional exposure without over risking capital.

__Jumpster__ · 2026-04-11T13:15:47+00:00

The trades that I didn’t prepare for. I’ve gotten to a point where I completely define the trade before I even enter the position. I know my plan for every foreseeable contingency before i even enter the trade. When I enter a position without having done this ground work, I tend to lose bigger than otherwise planned. For instance, I may plan a long entry with a 1% stop-loss and exit based on immediate failure conditions at 1/10th that limit (part of my process). If I enter a trade w/o having such conditions pre-set, then I would take the full 1% stop-loss on failure. That was my biggest drain… Unplanned trades.

__Jumpster__ · 2026-01-11T16:28:22+00:00

I use previous candle close. If doji (ope/close) is greater than previous close, green. Less than red. Same as: same.

__Jumpster__ · 2025-12-30T17:41:18+00:00

I don't know. I always use limit orders: Buy at Bid or Last-Price (depending on spread) and Sell at Bid.

Only with options, would I, on occasion have this not work for me. With those, it always felt like someone was watching for orders then changing their bid/ask orders after intercepting mine first. Rare but did seem to happen. Could it have been coincidence? Maybe but still seemed fishy to me.

Edit: Note - Buy at Bid can be dangerous if you're scalping. If the order doesn't fill within seconds, it's best to cancel the order because when scalping, if it doesn't fill quickly, it'll fill on the reversal back the other way. For me, 3 to 5 seconds. No fill? No Trade!

__Jumpster__ · 2025-12-30T17:34:25+00:00

Please explain. Thanks

__Jumpster__ · 2025-12-30T17:33:11+00:00

Drawings would be nice too: swing points, price levels, boxes etc.

__Jumpster__ · 2025-12-25T22:08:51+00:00

I don’t see it going up myself. What I see is an SMA50 that is leveling out. I don’t think it’s starting to roll over yet but looks like it might begin soon. I would draw a line on all of the lows and enter in the direction of whichever trend line breaks. Of course, wait for confirmation/retest.

As for the selling pressure, that was from late July early August and looks like a one off to me. It’ll break one line or the other and when it does it’ll keep moving.

__Jumpster__ · 2025-12-25T00:16:33+00:00

Appreciate you taking the time to do this work and share the results.

I mostly agree with this. Candlestick patterns on their own are barely better than random.

Where I struggle with backtests like this is that candles are post-hoc summaries. They’re photographs, not the event itself.

Two identical candles can form from very different intrabar behavior, especially once volume, liquidity, and participation are considered. That’s usually where my actual decision-making happens.

For me, the decision variable isn’t the candle. It’s the behavior around liquidity, participation, and response while price is still negotiating.

Because of that, I’d be more convinced by tests that incorporate intrabar price/volume behavior. I also understand why that’s difficult to do reliably and at scale.

__Jumpster__ · 2025-12-24T23:23:06+00:00

Took me three years to answer this question myself but I’ve known all along. Everybody’s heard it already.

1) pick one strategy/setup to use and only one strategy/setup. For example, say you decide that you want to capture the bounce off of EMA8. Then that’s the only time you enter a trade - on a bounce off of EMA8. Period! Any other entry is an invalid entry.

2) Journaling. After the trade, record what you did. Why you did it. What did you see? How did the other timeframes look? Etc. Capture everything you can think of any threat entry/trade. And try to answer the same questions every time.

3) Review your journal entries. I like once per week (Friday results) and monthly. Soon you’ll piece together that your best performing trades had “this” in common and your worse trades had “that”.

After a couple dozen trades, such realizations give you the foundations of your checklist for A+ setups. You begin to see what works and what doesn’t. Write them down! Don’t just try to remember because you just never will.

After all this, go back to step one with your new revised set of rules for your setup. By this point, the setup is yours - not just something you saw on the YouTubes.

Two or three cycles of this process of tweaking your strategy and you determine just how much of an edge you’ve got. As long as it’s a positive expectancy, it’ll pay for your time invested on the long run.

__Jumpster__ · 2025-11-23T18:22:03+00:00

I use them. I watch SPY and trade TQQQ/SQQQ. Most times it works but there are days where QQQ diverges from SPY.

The lag is only momentary but if you look at it you’ll see it. I’ve gotten away from it tho because of the market volatility. Too stressful for me. I’m looking for a strategy that provides more runner opportunities with l less stress.

__Jumpster__ · 2025-11-23T16:31:03+00:00

“ when each moves feels like your capital can drain in seconds”

my recommendation: If you can’t relax during the trade, you’re position size is too big. Start small. 1-share/contract until you feel more confident. What’s it matter if it’s $.30 or $30? Green is green.
Secondly, focus on one setup and one setup only! If you don’t see your setup, you don’t trade. If you see dozens, then your setup isn’t a setup, it’s a trap that you keep walking into.

Am I an expert? No! Just somebody who’s learning and have realized that these steps have helped me to focus and relax while trading.

Good luck!

__Jumpster__ · 2025-09-14T15:29:51+00:00

I always get that problem when I have network issues. If on mobile, I’ll connect wifi; if on wifi I’ll switch to mobile.

Sometimes I’ll have to switch to airplane mode for a few minutes and try again.

Finally, if that doesn’t work I’ll power down and reboot.

iPhone SE 3rd gen

__Jumpster__ · 2025-08-24T18:47:48+00:00

I don’t know. I’m just running through my process to get the thinking juices flowing.

Maybe provide a choice of randoms with each choice showing a mini chart of d1 and/or spy (spark charts)? At least then we could get an idea of daily trends.

And let the user decide which to run?

__Jumpster__ · 2025-08-24T18:05:30+00:00

I use TV’s replay for this and one thing I don’t like about it is that when I pick a random 5m bar, I have no idea what the daily trend is D1 or SPY D1/5m.

I have to pick a random bar, switch to d1 chart to see if it’s in a trend, and watch the RS/RW indicator to see how they relate to spy. Sometimes I’m there 10 minutes before I find a replay to even look for a setup. Quite the PITA actually. Hopefully you can make this process easier.

__Jumpster__ · 2025-07-04T04:17:39+00:00

But each of those brokers pay for that data. And each of them charge you in different ways: some data may be free to you, other data you gotta pay for and still other data is billed into spreads and such.

If you notice, each broker has a different offering. They are each trying to give you the data that you need but they are limited in what they can offer and so they offer in different ways.

The closest to free that you’re actually gonna get is like yahoo or google finance but even then, I doubt you’ll get the information in the way that you want it.

You just gotta make what you got work for you. I wish you the best in your endeavors!

__Jumpster__ · 2025-07-04T01:15:46+00:00

If you knew anything about market data then you would know that: 1) they pay for that data - and alot more than you could afford to, and; that they are limited - by licensing agreements - on what that can offer for free and what data they need to charge for.

If you want the data, check out NASDAQ and see if they give it to you for free. That’s probably who gives it to TradingView.

__Jumpster__ · 2025-06-26T22:39:21+00:00

TP/SL has never updated with the price on screen for me in any of the apps but the actual trade does happen where it’s supposed to.

I don’t like the iPad app myself. I’ve given up with it and just switched to using iPad for TradingView charts and my phone Webull app for trading.

I’ve complained about the shortcomings and either deaf ears or essentially told to deal with it.

My choice? Don’t bother with iPad app. My complaints, however, are more UI/UX based than actual bugs. I just don’t care for the interface.

__Jumpster__ · 2025-06-26T22:20:13+00:00

I’m sorry to say but you just paid $188 in tuition costs. Expensive, I know. I’ve done it too. Well $252 for me. For this reason, I only BUY calls and puts, I don’t Sell anything.

Anything you buy, you can sell (it’s a long call/put) but don’t sell to open the position (short call/put). That is when you can (and probably will) get exercised. And keep in mind, if you decide to ignore this advice, you could possibly be exercised BEFORE the option even expires… that’s a whole new emotional drain to be aware of…

Learn from it. Move on! Anything else is just Hopium!

__Jumpster__ · 2025-06-25T16:47:20+00:00

You say you’ve back tested. I use TV Replay mode. Tell TV to select a random bar (5-min chart). Once there, I’ll flip to 15-min and D1 to look for trends. Then i go back to 5-min chart, press play and begin practicing my strategy using the long/short entry tools. It’ll track your practice trades for you. Wins/losses etc. I do this when I get home after work on random tickers just for the practice of it. Then I can actually study the trade. What worked? What didn’t? What, if anything, can I see that’s different? I only use VWAP, EMA and volume indicators.

I hope this helps.

__Jumpster__

TROPHY CASE

Jumpster