Why It’s Critical to Journal Wins and Losses With Equal Attention

Most traders only write in their journal after a losing day. They want to analyze what went wrong, release frustration, or justify their decisions. But ignoring wins in your journal is a huge mistake. Documenting your best trades is just as important—if not more—than reflecting on your failures. In prop firm trading, consistency is the goal. You don’t just want to avoid errors—you want to understand what you did right so you can repeat it under pressure. If you passed your Legends Trading or Prop Shop Traders evaluation, your journal should become a blueprint for funded consistency, and that only happens if you log your wins and losses equally.

The Problem with Only Journaling Losses

When you only document red days, your journal becomes a record of what’s broken. You end up reinforcing negative emotions—guilt, self-doubt, frustration—while giving yourself no reference point for success. Over time, this creates a skewed perception that you’re always struggling, even if your equity curve is going up. It also leaves you vulnerable to repeating good behavior by accident rather than by design.

Key problems include:

• Lack of confidence because positive performance isn’t reinforced
• Missed opportunity to study and replicate winning setups
• No feedback loop to confirm which strategies actually work
• Inability to build a “playbook” of A+ trade behavior

What You Learn From Journaling Winning Trades

When you write about a win, you’re not just celebrating. You’re dissecting the setup, your mindset, your timing, and your exit. This helps you crystallize what “good trading” actually looks like. Journaling wins trains your brain to recognize successful behavior and wire it in.

Journaling wins also helps you:

• Identify what market conditions favor your strategy
• Capture the confidence you felt so you can recreate it
• Reinforce discipline that led to proper execution
• Create visual memory links using screenshots

If you took a trade on the NQ futures market during high volatility, respected your entry zone, scaled out at the right time, and followed your stop-loss plan perfectly, that needs to be preserved. That’s what separates funded traders from those who keep resetting.

How to Journal Wins Without Bragging

Some traders avoid journaling wins because they don’t want to seem overconfident. But this isn’t about bragging. It’s about dissecting success as objectively as you would dissect a failure. Ask the same questions:

• Was this trade in alignment with my plan?
• Did I manage risk properly?
• Did I feel calm or emotional?
• What made this trade work?
• Can this setup be repeated?

Don’t just record the profit. Record the process. That’s what will carry you through your next funded account or payout milestone.

Side-by-Side Journaling for Wins and Losses

Consider keeping a side-by-side layout where you compare your biggest win of the week to your biggest loss. Ask:

• What was different in preparation?
• Was there a shift in mindset or energy?
• Did I follow rules in one and break them in the other?

This dual-entry format can be done weekly and is featured in the Ultimate Trading Journal Sheets as part of the Weekly Recap template. Over time, it trains your mind to seek symmetry in how you review trades—regardless of outcome.

Emotional Neutrality: The Key to Funded Success

Prop firms want emotionally neutral traders. That doesn’t mean robotic—it means self-regulated. If you’re only writing about the bad days, your self-image becomes negative and reactive. If you’re only writing about good days, you become overconfident and reckless. But if you reflect on both, you stay balanced.

Journaling wins and losses helps you build that neutrality. It reminds you that trading is about process, not outcome. It encourages you to ask the same questions no matter the result, which leads to more consistent behavior over time.

Examples of Balanced Journal Entries

Let’s look at two simplified entries from a trader using the ES (S&P 500 futures) contract:

Winning Trade Entry:

• Setup: Opening range breakout at market open
• Plan adherence: Yes – waited for confirmation
• Emotion: Calm, patient – had coffee, meditated
• Execution: Good fill, partial profit at +4pts, final runner closed at target
• Lesson: Patience on open paid off – pre-market plan matched price action

Losing Trade Entry:

• Setup: Midday reversal off VWAP
• Plan adherence: No – entered without confirmation
• Emotion: Frustrated from earlier missed trade
• Execution: Entered late, stop hit fast
• Lesson: Need to stop trading after 11:30AM unless clear trend resumes

See how both entries are equally valuable? The key is to journal the same variables and use the same discipline—win or lose.

Revisiting Old Wins Before a Challenge

Before starting a new prop firm challenge, revisit your best journaled trades. Flip through your winning entries and look for setups, emotional conditions, and execution behavior you want to replicate. These serve as positive anchors and reminders that you can perform under pressure.

This becomes even more important when preparing for firms with trailing drawdowns or strict daily loss limits. You want to start from a place of clarity and confidence—not fear or memory of failure.

Organizing Your Journal to Highlight Wins and Losses

Use color-coded tabs, highlighters, or digital tags to distinguish wins and losses. The goal is to make your journal easy to scan for both types of trades. Consider creating a “Top 5 Trades” section each month to build your personal playbook. Likewise, keep a “Mistake Log” with your worst five.

The Prop Firm Press printable system includes templates for both wins and losses, structured identically so you learn to treat both with equal respect and attention.

The Discipline Is in the Balance

Journaling wins and losses equally isn’t just about gathering data—it’s about becoming the type of trader who doesn’t flinch under pressure. The type who doesn’t overreact to success or failure. This balance is what prop firms look for when evaluating trader consistency. And it’s what allows you to keep trading after you pass, after you get funded, and after you withdraw your first profits.

Your journal isn’t a report card—it’s a mirror. Treat every trade, win or loss, as a chance to see yourself clearly. That’s where the edge is.