18 March 2026
What belongs in a volume-first trade journal
Five fields we ask intensive participants to keep — and the two decorative fields we tell them to delete.
A journal that lists mood, weather, and five indicator readings rarely helps a volume-focused review. During the intensive’s private journal session we ask for a tighter record.
Keep these fields
- Session and timeframe
- Volume context versus the prior twenty bars at entry
- Whether the level was a prior high-volume node
- What happened to price over the next three bars
- One sentence on whether effort matched result
Delete these
- Long emotional essays written after the close
- Screenshots without annotations
Emotions matter, but they belong in a separate note if they drown the volume story. Screenshots without marks force the coach to guess what you saw — and guessing wastes the forty-five minutes reserved for your review.