Stock Trader Daily Note

[chart_analyst]

We had a previous thread on this topic, now closed, that was the precursor to this version of my Daily Trading Note (DTN). It has changed quite a bit, and I thought I would put a “How To” post out here to show how I am doing it now to help others, and also solicit input from other traders to make it better. The DTN includes the following:

1. Review of Trading Plan (use square brackets to link to plan)
2. Overall Market Assessment (manual input)
3. Daily Profit/Loss Table (calculated with dataview)
4. Today’s Trades (text description with tags and links)
5. Before Market Open (BMO) and After Market Close (AMC) Futures Snapshot (images paste from broker)
6. Sector Snapshots (image paste from OpenBBTerminal)
7. Comments

I initially used a lot of Tradingview widgets, but have since discarded them, as they took up a lot of space and I could get the information elsewhere, so they didn’t add much value.

To implement the DTN, I use 4 plugins: Daily Notes, Templates, dataview and QuickAdd. There are lots of guides on using daily notes and Templates, so I will assume you have that up and running, and will focus mostly on how I build each section within the DTN. Although all sections are important, the Daily Profit/Loss Table is really key for me.

Section 1) Review of Trading Plan - In this section I have a link to a note that is my Trading Plan. It is first in the list, because I consider it imperative to review this document every morning and reinforce my rules.

Section 2) Overall Market Assessment - Here I use stoplight colored circles to indicate market conditions for index futures, VIX, my portfolio, and a hedge signal. Each one gets a green/yellow/red ranking, which goes into an overall ranking. I then indicate if I think this is a day to scalp, swing, or long term trade. I also input a key pivot level for the SPX index. All of this is input manually. Here is an image of Sections 1 & 2.

Section 3) Daily Profit/Loss Table - shoutout to supersuper on Discord for helping me with this. It involves three components - a template, dataview code and a YAML file. I set up a template for the YAML file called ‘LogTrade’, which is launched using QuickAdd. Here is a YAML example, where XXXX is the stock symbol:

Here is the QuickAdd setup for the LogTrade template:

When I enter a trade, I press ‘Ctrl-Q’, select the LogTrade template, type in the stock symbol, and enter the trade details. Only the date, EntryTime, EntryPrice, Shares, ExitTime, ExitPrice and Commission are used in the dataview table. The other fields are optional. The YAML files are stored in a folder labeled Trading/Trades. The DTN is stored under Trading/Daily Trading Note.

Here is the dataview code:

This code is embedded into my DTN template. I modify the date in the file.day line every day to the current day. The Profit/Loss calculation is extremely simple and cannot handle complex trades with multiple entries and exits. Rather than writing complex code, I chose to make modifications to the YAML LogTrade file to get the result I want. For example, if I am trading options, I do not enter the number of contracts, I enter the number of shares represented by the contracts. If I am shorting, the share number is negative. If I have multiple entries/exits, I summarize it into 1 entry/exit. Here is the result:

The PnL table is a recent addition, and I think it is making a difference in my trading. It is in my face front and center all day long - and I really really want to see positive numbers there. I hate it when a negative number shows up. So I work harder to get pluses in this table, not minuses. It may seem kind of silly, but we humans are silly beasts - bottomline, I think this helps me from a psychological viewpoint.

Section 4) Today’s Trades - A more detailed description of trades - setup, why entered, tags, links, important details, comments, did I break a rule? If so, how to fix?

Section 5) Before and After Market snapshots of futures indices and VIX. Cut and pasted from my broker.

Section 6) Before and After Market snapshots of sectors. Cut and pasted from OpenBBTerminal, but there are lots of other sources for this info.

Section 7) A general comment section, alerts, etc.

Below are snapshots in reading mode and source mode. Hope you find this helpful, and please chime in with ideas for improvement.

[chart_analyst]

The next step…create a cumulative chart of Profit and Loss, as described in this Obsidian dataview thread.

Cumulative Profit/Loss graph

[ironhak]

Hello, nice configuration.
May I suggest Obsidian it’s not the optimal tool for this? Don’t try to force it to be what it’s not. Even notion is too basilar to me… Your best chance is an excel sheet or a dedicated app like edgewonk or similar.

Hope this help.

[chart_analyst]

Hello ironhak and thanks for reading and replying to my post. While it is clear that Obsidian was not originally designed for this application, I think that, for my purpose, it is working well. With all the plugins, it is very flexible. I also like that it can store my data locally rather than in the cloud.

I have used several commercial tools such as Trading Diary Pro and others, and I always come back to a private note-taking system. Edgewonk was one of the better ones in my opinion, but it does not handle options.

Again, thanks for your comments.

[josephcaprap]

I think the same, I have been a trader for 10 years, I have gone through many different periods until you understand that using a journal is… a law of life, it is possibly the most useful and necessary tool in trading, not having it is like trying to swim without use hands and feet. For this reason, leaving this management to Obsidian is, at the very least, making your life very complicated; at best, it will consume a lot of time (exaggerated) to obtain a ridiculous information management benefit. Currently there are very very good applications that are even improving even more with the help of AIs that not only allow the recording of data (which is what is intended in this idea of obsidian) but also allows recording all the data of months with a couple of clicks (you won’t have that in Obsidian) when importing the broker’s files, but they also have almost unlimited functions when analyzing your own data (which is really their value) I would recommend 2 no I know if you know them, tradesync or edgewonk

[tjholland]

I have tinkered a bit with a trading dashboard. This looks pretty interesting and I might give it whirl. I found anytype to be a pretty good trade dashboard but have settled on Tana. I don’t use all the bells and whistles in tana but it works pretty well. I really like the daily note in tana that can be configured easily to pull up my daily plan etc

[chart_analyst]

Yes, I wanted to use Edgewonk, but the lack of options was a deal killer. I’m currently using TradesViz, which handles all the assets that I trade. But I find note-taking clunky - the trades aren’t synced until the next day, so you can’t attach a note to a trade in real time. So I still need somewhere to record notes in real time, and so far Obsidian has been the best for me.

[chart_analyst]

I am going to have a look at Tana, it sounds interesting. Do you know if there are any pre-configured templates for Tana on trading?

[J_B]

Is it possible that Tana is just a bit of a notion clone?