Trading Journal Template India: What to Log After Every Trade and Why

A trading journal template for India has one job. It turns every trade you take on NSE or BSE into a record you can go back and study. Most of us remember our best wins and our worst losses and forget everything in between. A journal fixes that. You log the plan, the execution, the costs and your state of mind for each trade, and after 30 or 50 trades you can see what’s actually making you money and what’s losing it. Below you’ll find a ready-to-copy template, what each field is for, and a way to review the log without burning hours on it.

If the risk side of trading is new to you, keep our risk management in trading pillar open alongside this. Several fields below (risk per trade, stop distance, R-multiple) come straight from it.

Why a trading journal template matters for Indian traders

SEBI’s own data makes the argument better than we can. In its July 2024 study of intraday trading in the equity cash segment, the regulator found that 7 out of 10 individual intraday traders (71%) ended FY 2022-23 with a net loss. Among those doing more than 500 trades a year, the share of loss-makers climbed to 80%. The study also found that loss-makers spent an extra 57% of their trading losses on trading costs, while profit-makers spent 19% of their trading profits on costs.

Derivatives look worse. SEBI’s July 2025 study of the equity derivatives segment says about 91% of individual traders lost money in FY25. Their combined net loss after transaction costs rose 41% to ₹1,05,603 crore, up from ₹74,812 crore in FY24. The average loss per person was ₹1,10,069.

A journal won’t change those odds on its own. What it will do is tell you which group you belong to, and why. Three things in the SEBI numbers matter for anyone keeping a log. Losses rise as trade count rises. Costs take a real bite out of winners and losers alike. And in the intraday study, loss-makers traded more often on average than profit-makers. Your journal is how you find out whether those same patterns are hiding in your own account.

A trading journal is not a diary of what the market did. It is a record of what you did, and it is the only dataset in the market that is entirely about you.

Trading journal template India: fields to log after every trade

Copy the table below into Google Sheets or Excel and give each trade its own row. You fill the first group of columns before you enter, the second when you exit, and the last at the end of the day, once you’ve calmed down.

The example values are only there for illustration. They aren’t a trade recommendation. Keep the sheet short enough that you’ll actually fill it in. Ten fields you update every day beat forty fields you give up on after a week.

Before you enter: writing down the plan

These columns force you to commit to a plan in writing. If you can’t fill in the stop loss and the risk in rupees, you don’t have a trade yet. You have an idea. Writing down the planned stop and target also gives you the planned risk-to-reward, and our guide to the risk reward ratio in trading shows how to work that out.

Quantity should come from a position-sizing rule, not a gut feeling. If you follow a fixed-percentage rule, the journal is where you check you really stuck to it. Take a trader with ₹2,00,000 in capital and a 1% risk rule. The “risk in rupees” column should never show more than ₹2,000. If bigger numbers keep creeping in on certain days, the journal has caught a problem. Our post on fixed fractional position sizing lays out the method step by step.

If we had to pick the single most important field, it’d be the setup name. Use the same handful of names every time, like “breakout”, “pullback to 20-day average” or “gap fill”. A few months in, you can filter by setup and see which ones earn and which ones you should drop. Free-text notes that read differently every time can’t be grouped, so stay consistent with the labels.

At exit: what actually happened, and what it cost

The exit columns record reality. Put the planned entry next to the actual fill and you see your slippage. Put the planned stop next to the actual exit and you see whether you honoured the stop or shifted it. Watch for rows where the exit reason says “manual” and the loss is bigger than the planned risk. That’s a red flag, because it usually means the stop got moved or ignored.

Always log charges separately from gross profit or loss. A broker’s charges page will usually list brokerage, STT, exchange transaction charges, SEBI charges, GST and stamp duty. Each one is tiny on a single trade. Across hundreds of trades they pile up fast. SEBI’s intraday study shows why this matters: for loss-makers in FY23, costs added 57% on top of their trading losses. If your gross P&L is a little positive but your net P&L is negative, the journal is telling you that you’re trading too often for the size of your edge.

You don’t have to type every trade by hand, either. Most Indian brokers let you export a tradebook. Zerodha’s support page, for instance, says you can download your tradebook from Console in XLSX or CSV format, filtered by segment and date range, for up to 365 days at a time. Paste that export into your sheet once a week and add the plan, setup and review columns yourself.

Working out the R-multiple

The R-multiple measures your result against the risk you planned. One R is the rupee amount you expected to lose if the stop was hit. Divide your net P&L by it:

• Planned risk ₹1,000, net profit ₹2,500: +2.5R
• Planned risk ₹1,000, net loss ₹1,000: -1R (stop honoured)
• Planned risk ₹1,000, net loss ₹1,800: -1.8R (stop moved, slippage or a gap)

With R-multiples, trades of different sizes sit on the same scale. They also make rule-breaking hard to miss. Lots of losses worse than -1R means you have an execution problem, not a strategy problem.

End of day: mood, context and lessons

The numbers tell you what happened. These fields tell you why. Zerodha Varsity’s chapter “Diary of Your Thoughts” describes a trader who sleeps badly, starts the day irritated, and then bails out of a position early at a loss when the plan would have hit its target. The chapter’s point is that noting what was going on around each trade, even if you don’t log every single one, helps you spot the patterns that cloud your thinking. It also mentions that some traders and coaches suggest sitting out the days when these small things have knocked you off balance.

Keep the mood entry to a word or two: “calm”, “rushed”, “revenge”, “bored”, “tired”. After a month, sort by mood and look at net P&L. If a handful of emotional days explain a big share of your losses, the journal has just handed you an easy rule, something like “no new trades after two losses in a day”. Our post on trading biases that wipe accounts runs through the most common patterns to look out for.

The question a journal should answer is not “was this trade a winner?” but “would I take this exact trade again, the same way, tomorrow?”

How to review your trading journal each week

An unreviewed journal is just a list. Block out 30 minutes at the end of each week, ideally on Saturday when markets are shut, and go through the same short checklist every time:

1. Net P&L and charges. Total up gross P&L, charges and net P&L for the week, and note how much of gross profit went to costs.
2. Win rate and average R. Count winners and losers, then find the average winning R and average losing R. A low win rate is fine as long as your average winner is much bigger than your average loser.
3. Results by setup. Filter by setup name. Keep what works, keep an eye on what’s flat, and stop trading what keeps losing.
4. Plan-followed rate. Count the rows marked “N” in the followed-plan column, then compare the net P&L of trades where you followed the rules with trades where you didn’t.
5. Trade count. Check whether your busiest days were also your worst. SEBI found the share of loss-makers rose to 80% among intraday traders doing more than 500 trades a year, which is reason enough to watch this one closely.
6. One change for next week. Pick a single lesson and write it at the top of next week’s sheet. One change at a time is easier to stick with and easier to measure.

Expectancy: the number to watch over time

Once you’ve logged 30 or more trades, you can calculate expectancy, the average result per trade in R. The formula is (win rate × average win in R) minus (loss rate × average loss in R). Suppose 40% of your trades win an average of 2R and 60% lose an average of 1R. Your expectancy is (0.4 × 2) − (0.6 × 1) = 0.2R per trade. A positive figure after costs means your process has an edge on paper. A negative one means something has to change before you put in more money. Small samples can mislead, though, so treat early results as a rough guide only.

Journaling mistakes that are easy to make

• Logging only the losers. Winners need a look too. A winning trade where you broke your rules is a bad habit that happened to pay.
• Filling it in days later. Memory shifts quickly, especially about why you got in. Complete the before-entry fields before you place the order.
• Too many fields. If a row takes more than two or three minutes to fill, cut columns until it doesn’t.
• No setup names. Without consistent labels you can’t group trades, and the review leaves you with nothing to act on.
• Ignoring charges. Gross P&L hides the cost drag that SEBI’s study shows hurts winners and losers both.
• Never reviewing. Put the weekly review in your calendar like any other appointment.

Paper trades and small size count too

You can start journaling before any real money is on the line. Log paper trades in the same template and mark them in the segment column. When you switch to real capital, begin with small size and carry on in the same sheet. Putting paper results next to live results is one of the quickest ways to see how emotion and slippage change your numbers. Our guide to paper trading before real capital explains how to practise setups without putting your account at risk.

What to remember

• A good trading journal template covers three stages: the plan before entry, the execution at exit, and a short review at the end of the day.
• Log charges separately and track net P&L. SEBI’s FY23 intraday study found costs added 57% on top of loss-makers’ trading losses.
• Stick to consistent setup names and use the R-multiple so trades can be grouped and compared.
• Note mood and context in a word or two. Patterns usually surface within a month.
• Review every week, change one thing at a time, and start tracking expectancy once you have enough trades.

This article is for education only and is not investment advice. Trading in equity and derivatives involves risk of loss. Please consult a SEBI-registered adviser before making trading decisions.