Wondering anyone using Obsidian for stock trading or investment? Interested to understand how others are using it for brainstorming, keeping track, notes and research.
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Ooh, I’m following. I’m a futures trader and currently track everything in Coda. Notion before that. Would love to utilize Obsidian in this area.
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Had impression trades would use this platform. Started adding notes + articles. Working out well.
I’m just exploring this as well for trading, but more from a psychological aspect.
The way I was thinking of using this is like Van Tarp approaches trading in general with keeping track of errors , take action to solve this, and explore what is driving my behaviour.
I know bit philosophical nut still 
think linking stuff together to learn and review your own progress must be valuable.
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I am just getting into using Obsidian and definitely interested in seeing how to use Obsidian not only to keep track of companies but each of the quarterly reports to make notes on what was said and keep tabs of that going forward.
I like the idea of keeping track of failures too that @Wxll mentioned. This could be powerful way of keeping tabs of your investment thesis to begin with.
I am on Day 1 of exploring Obsidian as a stock/option/futures trading journal to record my swing trades. I currently use Joplin, which is great, but have been wanting more. I noticed a Joplin user mention Obsidian on the Joplin forum, and thought I would give it a try. Hopefully we can share some ideas/templates and come up with some good ideas to apply this to become better traders!
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OK, I pulled all my notes from Joplin and put them in Obsidian. I’m starting to do something? with my trading notes; it may be a bit lame at first, but hey it’s a start. I expect it will morph a lot. Here are some questions I am dealing with:
Folders: My Joplin notes were organized by quarterly notes. Within each note were daily comments on trades, with asset, account, time, entry type, exit type. There was no real reason to organize notes by quarters, it just seemed convenient. How do you organize your folders/notes for trading?
Tags: I did not use tags in Joplin, but I am now tagging the asset, setup, entry, exit. Should I be using links instead of tags?
Dates & Times: Is there an easy way to insert a date/time in Obsidian? Joplin had a nice little button for that, don’t see one in Obsidian. Should I tag dates?
Profit & Loss: I’m debating if I should track P&L for each trade, in the event that a math plugin is added at some point. It would be cool to keep a running cumulative P&L graph in Obsidian.
Here’s a typical entry for a day:
Friday, July 30, 2021
- Markets down this morning as #AMZN and #PINS had disappointing [[earnings]]. Recovered later, then bounced around.
- #KNBE - 7:33AM - #Account - #ANTS setup, bot 5% position. This is [[IPO]] so limited position to 5%.
The earnings and IPO links are empty at the moment. They are both pretty key for trading, so I added the links. Not a clue how I will use them yet.
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I just watched the Nick Milo 6 video series on Obsidian, which is quite good for beginners like me. Also watched one on Block References. Already coming up with ideas.
For example, I am going experiment with using nested tags, such as #Stocks/AMZN, #Futures/ES, #Options/MSFT. I’ll also give links a try for this, but less sure how that will work. I will experiment with Block References to tie my Entry and Exit notes together, so I don’t have to hunt for them. My current notes are just a linear date format. I may enter a trade on May 1, sell on June 3, and the notes are not related in any way, which makes it difficult to review why I entered the trade alongside my exit strategy. I think Obsidian has potential to improve my trading, so I’m excited about learning more.
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You could use a template for this. Create a template with your preferred {{date}} and {{time}} format, and you can then add it to any note at the touch of a button (or two).
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I’ve decided to use a daily note format, much expanded compared to my previous note format. Here’s a template that shows the components that I’ve included.
Used this for 2 days, so it is likely to morph as I find out what works and what doesn’t. I’ve seen immediate benefits from using the tags and links. For example, my note on a trade entry was never connected to my note on the exit - I had to search to find the entry note. Now I just click on the stock ticker, which is a tag, and my entry/exit notes show up immediately. I can caclutate PnL and assess the trade much quicker.
Maybe this will give you some ideas, and I would welcome feedback!
Oh, another thing I forgot to mention - the Portfolio and Watchlist are block references, and when you roll the mouse over the tickers, the Stock Profile/Description pops up. This is especially handy for the watchlist, when the stock might be new to me.
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I’m continuing to dive into using Obsidian as a trading journal. Latest progress: I have figured out (with some help from this great community) how to embed a stock widget in my daily trading note. See this link:
Here is the code for embedding the Tradingview ticker widget into your notes.
<iframe scrolling="no" allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0" src="https://s.tradingview.com/embed-widget/tickers/?locale=en#%7B%22symbols%22%3A%5B%7B%22description%22%3A%22SPY%22%2C%22proName%22%3A%22AMEX%3ASPY%22%7D%2C%7B%22description%22%3A%22QQQ%22%2C%22proName%22%3A%22QQQ%22%7D%2C%7B%22description%22%3A%22IWM%22%2C%22proName%22%3A%22AMEX%3AIWM%22%7D%2C%7B%22description%22%3A%22BTC%22%2C%22proName%22%3A%22BTCUSD%22%7D%2C%7B%22description%22%3A%22ETH%22%2C%22proName%22%3A%22ETHUSD%22%7D%5D%2C%22colorTheme%22%3A%22light%22%2C%22isTransparent%22%3Afalse%2C%22showSymbolLogo%22%3Atrue%2C%22width%22%3A%22100%25%22%2C%22height%22%3A104%2C%22utm_source%22%3A%22www.tradingview.com%22%2C%22utm_medium%22%3A%22widget_new%22%2C%22utm_campaign%22%3A%22tickers%22%7D" style="box-sizing: border-box; height: calc(72px); width: 100%;"></iframe>
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Do you use this for research at all or just daily trading notes?
Just daily trading notes. I can do research through my broker and charting platform, so no need to repeat it in Obsidian. I might document some of it in Obsidian, but only for reminders or tasks, so it’s not extensive.
Generally speaking, I haven’t found much use for any of the TradingView widgets in my daily notes; most of the stuff I get through my broker or charts, so I don’t need to clutter my daily note with the widgets. But one that I do find handy is the daily economic calendar. If it’s at the bottom of my daily note, it’s super handy - better than going to a web page.
Here’s the iframe code for it below. Just edit the height and width numbers to fit your notes.
<iframe scrolling="no" allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0" src="https://www.tradingview-widget.com/embed-widget/events/?locale=en#%7B%22colorTheme%22%3A%22light%22%2C%22isTransparent%22%3Afalse%2C%22width%22%3A%22510%22%2C%22height%22%3A%22600%22%2C%22importanceFilter%22%3A%220%2C1%22%2C%22currencyFilter%22%3A%22USD%22%2C%22utm_source%22%3A%22www.tradingview.com%22%2C%22utm_medium%22%3A%22widget_new%22%2C%22utm_campaign%22%3A%22events%22%7D" style="box-sizing: border-box; height: calc(568px); width: 700px;"></iframe>
This code snippet really inspires me. I often quote stock symbols in my observation notes, and for every symbol I create a markdown file in my Stocks folder like this:
---
symbol: "NASDAQ:AAPL"
---
`="<iframe src=\"https://www.tradingview-widget.com/embed-widget/mini-symbol-overview/?locale=en&colorTheme=dark&symbol=" + this.symbol + "\" width=\"380\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen></iframe>"`
What this snippet basically does is to make use of the “Inline Expressions” feature in Dataview plugin, and create an iframe according to the symbol attribute. So
- Make sure you have Dataview plugin installed and inline expressions enabled.
- Every time you quote another stock (or index/bond/asset/crypto/…), just make a duplicate of this file, change the
symbolattribute at the top. Switch to preview mode and - the new file shows an entire new stock. (The file name doesn’t matter, it’s just the symbol attribute that matters.) - If the preview still shows the previous stock, restarting Obsidian usually makes a force refresh of Dataview and thus showing the correct result.
- You can append other widgets as well using the same trick.
- It works on mobile too! (as long as you’ve fine-tuned the parameters)
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Here’s the latest addition to my daily trading note template. I usually get several end-of-day alerts from my charting software (or broker). I would observe these and make a mental note to look into them the next day. Next day arrived, and I’m distracted my a myriad of other things, and I don’t check these alerts.
So I’ve created an Alerts Link, and added a Block Reference to the Alerts in the daily note template. Stocks that have alerts for the past week are automatically front and center in the daily note every day. Like this:
Awesome thread here. Great stuff!
I’m not quite as savvy as you all, but very interested to know what you did to set up the alerts link and block reference in your daily note template to automate that. I get my alerts through Tradingview and I have definitely missed out on a few ideas because of next day distractions.
Fascinating usage! Do you have to manually add a duplicate file of the code snippet to your folder and change the symbol reference, or is there to automate both the duplicate and update the symbol?
The system chart-analyst described looks cool. I’m not a trader but thought I’d suggest the general system I use as a scientist, where my experiments are like your trades.
Three basic categories of notes, designated by tags:
- personal - anything that is my own thinking or summary of references
- external - any external reference (mostly scientific literature). I cite these notes in my personal notes using links.
- experiment - each experiment has its own note. I also cite these notes in personal notes.
I use tags to mark status of experiments (planned, ongoing, analyzing, accomplished).
Experiments have a zettel-like ID and title: for example “exp001_pilot insulin”, “exp002_pilot glucose”, “exp001b_insulin followup”. The ID helps me organize projects in a way that doesn’t require folders and can also expand as much is required (since I don’t know which projects will take off). Maybe you have a trading strategy or type of trade that could be tracked like this?
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