Intraday Trading Journal Template: What to Track and Why

Most retail intraday traders in India don’t keep a journal. The ones who become profitable almost all do. That correlation isn’t an accident.

This is a working template — not a 30-column spreadsheet you’ll abandon in a week.

The principle

A trading journal isn’t a diary. It’s a feedback loop. You’re trying to answer three questions:

Which setups make money? Which don’t?
Which conditions destroy your discipline?
Where are you leaving R-multiple on the table?

Anything that doesn’t help answer those is decoration.

The minimum-viable template (11 columns)

Column	Why
Date	Time-series filter
Symbol	Pattern by sector / cap
Setup tag	Which strategy bucket (ORB / VWAP / Pivot / Other)
Direction	Long / Short
Entry time	Time-of-day analysis
Entry price	Reference
Stop price	R-multiple calc
Target price	R-multiple calc
Exit price	Outcome
Position size	Risk normalisation
Notes (1 line)	Why you took it / mistake flag

That’s it. Don’t add 20 columns you won’t fill.

The derived metrics (auto-computed)

From the 11 columns above, compute:

Risk per trade (₹) = |Entry − Stop| × Size
R-multiple = (Exit − Entry) / (Entry − Stop), signed by direction
Hold time = Exit time − Entry time
Cumulative P&L, win rate, avg R-win, avg R-loss, expectancy

Expectancy is the only number that tells you if a setup tag is making money over time. See AI signal accuracy for why expectancy beats win rate.

What to do with it (weekly review)

Every weekend, 30 minutes:

By setup tag: which has positive expectancy? Which has negative? Drop the worst.
By time-of-day: when do your trades work? The Indian intraday session has clear edge windows. Map yours.
By direction: are you symmetric? Most retail traders are bad shorts.
By size: are you bigger when you should be smaller (and vice versa)?
Mistake-flag rate: how often did you break your own rule? Track the trend.

Tag everything

Use short tags so you can filter. Examples:

Setup: ORB, VWAP_REJ, PIVOT_FADE, EMA_CROSS, NEWS.
Mistake flag: OVERSIZE, NO_STOP, MOVED_STOP, REVENGE, LATE_ENTRY, IGNORED_RULE.
Emotion (optional): CALM, FOMO, TILT, TIRED.

Half the value is being able to query “all REVENGE-flagged trades — what’s the P&L?” Spoiler: it’s negative.

A copy-paste markdown row

| 2026-04-15 | RELIANCE | VWAP_REJ | LONG | 09:42 | 2520 | 2508 | 2545 | 2541 | 75 | clean rejection, RSI 56 |

Yes, plain Markdown is enough. Notion, Obsidian, Google Sheets, Excel — pick one. The tool doesn’t matter; the consistency does.

What to track outside the table

Some things don’t fit in columns but matter:

Daily one-liner: “Three trades, two winners, broke rule on size for the third.”
Pre-market plan: the trade you planned to take, separately from the trades you took. Difference = discipline.
End-of-week summary: total P&L in R, top winning setup, top mistake.

If you do nothing else, write a one-line end-of-day note. Six months from now, those notes will surface patterns you’d never see in raw numbers.

What screenshot tools to use

For chart screenshots: TradingView’s “Share image” or a clean tool like CleanShot. Annotate the entry, stop, target, and exit on the same chart. Three minutes per trade.

The screenshots are not for impressing anyone — they let you review the setup at the moment of decision, not the post-hoc story.

Anti-patterns

Tracking only winners. You learn nothing. Tag the losses.
Adding 40 columns. You’ll quit in two weeks.
Logging only P&L. You can’t improve what you can’t bucket.
No review cadence. A journal you never read is a chore, not a system.

A simple weekly review template

Week of: 2026-04-13

P&L (R-multiples): +4.2R / -2.8R = +1.4R net
Win rate: 55%
Setup performance:
  - VWAP_REJ: +2.1R (best)
  - ORB:      +1.4R
  - PIVOT:    -0.3R (drop?)
  - NEWS:     -1.6R (drop)

Top mistake: MOVED_STOP on 2 trades (-1.8R)
Top win: 3.0R on RELIANCE VWAP_REJ on Tue

Next week focus:
  - Stop trading PIVOT and NEWS setups
  - Hard rule: SL is the SL

Five minutes. Repeat weekly. Cumulative effect is large.

FAQs

Notion or Excel? Either. Notion is friendlier for prose + screenshots. Excel is faster for pivots and R-curves.

Should I journal paper trades? Yes. Paper trade R-curves predict live R-curves with surprising accuracy if you’re honest about slippage.

How long until journaling pays off? ~30 trades to see setup-level signal. ~90 trades for confident expectancy estimates.

For where to start before the journal exists, read the intraday for beginners guide.