Futures Trading Journal Template: Exactly What to Track
Every field worth tracking on a futures trade, what each one reveals about your trading, and how to put them to work in your weekly review.
A journal template is a promise: log these fields, and your review will answer real questions. Log the wrong fields and you'll have a beautiful spreadsheet that teaches you nothing. This template is built for futures traders — every field earns its place by changing a decision.
Fields marked core are the non-negotiable minimum. Fields marked plus add depth once the core habit is solid. Start with core only; add plus fields after two consistent weeks. Keep the template where you can see it while you trade — taped to your monitor, pinned in a tab, or open in your journaling app — because a template you have to go looking for is a template you will stop using.
The template, field by field
Date & time Core
When the trade happened, including the session it belongs to. Time-of-day analysis is one of the highest-value cuts in futures — many traders discover their edge only exists in the first ninety minutes of New York.
Instrument Core
The symbol: MES, NQ, ES, CL, GC. Different products have different personalities, and your edge almost certainly isn't identical across them. Never blend instruments into one average.
Setup name Core
Your short name for the pattern: "opening drive," "VWAP fade," "breakout retest." Unnamed trades can't be grouped, and ungrouped trades can't be analyzed. If a trade doesn't fit a named setup, tag it "impulse" — honestly.
Direction Core
Long or short. Simple, but direction bias is real: plenty of futures traders are quietly much better on one side, usually without knowing it.
Entry, stop & target Core
The three prices that define the trade. Your stop placement defines your planned risk, which is the denominator of every R calculation downstream. Log the plan, not a revisionist version.
Position size & risk ($) Core
Contracts traded and dollars risked. Size is context: a 2R winner means something different on one micro versus ten minis, and drawdown math runs on dollars.
R-multiple Core
Profit or loss divided by planned risk. The great normalizer — it lets you compare trades across sizes, instruments, and days. Your journal should compute this automatically.
Screenshot Core
One chart image at entry. Months later the picture tells you what numbers can't: market structure, location, whether the setup was actually there or imagined.
State of mind Core
One tag per trade: calm, confident, anxious, tilted, rushed, bored. Futures losses are overwhelmingly behavioral — this field turns "I was tilted" from an excuse into a measurable, fixable cost.
Session Plus
Asian, London, New York AM, New York PM. If your platform tags time automatically, this is free insight — session-based performance gaps are among the most common findings in futures journals.
Commissions & fees Plus
Round-turn costs per trade. Scalpers are often shocked at what commissions do to expectancy — a strategy that's +0.3R gross can be barely breakeven net.
Notes & lesson Plus
One line, written the same day: "Chased after missing first entry" or "Followed plan perfectly." Future you will thank present you for the honesty.
A template is a promise: these fields, logged honestly, will answer real questions about your trading. Everything else is decoration.
Putting the template to work
Logging is half the system. Each weekend, run the template's fields through four questions:
- Setup: which setup has the best expectancy in R over the last 50 trades? Which one should be benched?
- Session: where does the edge actually live — and which sessions are you donating money to?
- State of mind: what did tilted, rushed, and anxious trades cost this week, in R and in dollars?
- Direction: is there a long/short skew worth respecting in position sizing?
Then write one rule for next week based on the answers. The template collects the data; the review converts it into behavior; the behavior compounds into an edge.
Frequently asked questions
How many fields should a trading journal have?
Start with nine core fields: date/time, instrument, setup, direction, entry/stop/target, size/risk, R-multiple, screenshot, and state of mind. Add more only when every core field is being logged consistently — adherence beats completeness.
Should I build this in a spreadsheet or use an app?
A spreadsheet works for logging, but the analysis — R by setup by session, equity curves, calendar views — is where dedicated journals earn their keep. If your review takes more than 20 minutes because of manual formulas, switch.
How do I track multiple prop firm evaluations?
Give each evaluation its own account in your journal with its own balance and rule set. Never mix eval trades with personal account trades — different constraints make blended data meaningless.
How often should I review my journal?
A quick daily glance (two minutes) plus a real 20-minute review every weekend. Daily keeps the data honest; weekly is where patterns turn into rules.
Stop building spreadsheets. Start finding edges.
TickTracker has every field in this template built in — R-multiples computed automatically, screenshots and emotions attached in seconds, weekly reviews that surface the patterns for you.
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