One of my biggest regrets is not keeping a diary of my trades. I don't even have a clue now when I started to improve at trading and not suck so much (and I sucked a lot).
It's easy to just use your account balance to keep track of how your doing, and as long as everything is to the upside then why worry ? Only now can I see that with a diary I maybe could have done a lot better.
It's fairly typical advice given to new traders, always keep a diary and you'll be able to go back over all your trades, see which ones worked and why, and also have a record of all the mistakes you made. I think at the time I was losing so many trades, and so much money that I didn't want the added bonus of a permanent shame record... but it's a decision I regret now. I think I got caught in the usual trap ' I'll remember this one, no need to write it down' and then never could.
In my last post I recalled the story of how I lost 70% of my account on one trade because I was an idiot, and to my shame now, I can't even remember what stock it was. I would love to go back over it and see how I could have managed it better, and if I would have made the same decisions or not. Well, hopefully not or I'd still be a shitty trader lol.
I have to admit though, even now I don't keep a trading diary, even though I know I should. So I can't be a hypocrite and recommend anyone else should keep one (although you should lol).
One thing that I do though, which is probably just if not more important, is keep a record of all my losing trades. Or more specifically, why they lost. The reason for most of my lost trades is because I've been an idiot. You can only blame so many losers on just bad luck and the market going the wrong way after all...
The best thing I find about having a 'fail' sheet, is it shames me into not making the same mistakes over and over (mostly...). Saying that, this month alone I am up to 14 fails due to my own idiocy. However without my fail sheet as a painful reminder it would probably be over 50 or so...
So that would be my advice, if you don't want to keep a diary (you probably should), and you don't want to print out annotated charts of your bad trades (you probably should), then at the very least keep a record of the reason your trades failed. You'll be amazed how invaluable it is, and the insight it gives you into your own mind when trading.
It still amazes me how I can make the same mistake 3 times in a row, even though I can see from my own record I've just made the same mistake twice. That's trading for you though, we're only human and it messes with your head, man !
I'll start doing a list soon of all the stupid mistakes that people tend to make (including me). To be honest I think it gets worse as you get better at trading. Not only should you know better by then, but you also start to get ahead of yourself and overrate your own abilities. Pride before a fall... Meh, it's good for the soul I suppose :-)
Image credit : https://mrsidiot.wordpress.com via Google image search. It's not me, before you ask.
Disclaimer : If you blindly act on the advice of strangers from the internet then you're an idiot and probably deserve to lose all your money. There's no fast track to success. Do your own research and make informed decisions based on all available evidence. Critical thinking is key.