Daily Report Card Template & Reasoning

Goal Section: It is so important to attack each day with intention and purpose. You must consciously know what you want to improve at, rather than aimlessly hoping to improve by osmosis. For various reasons, the brain operates best when focusing on one specific goal rather than multiple ones at once. I have found this true in my own experience and those I have trained. This section would list my one process goal that was my sole objective to improve upon. My whole day would be graded and judged as a win or a loss based on whether I improved on this goal.

Some Examples: proper sizing (with specific targets listed) or not overtrading (with defined metrics) or not fighting trends (again defined and detailed out here as well)

Reminders Section: I use this for whatever daily reminders help me get in the right mental state or I want to continue to habituate. Helping my subconscious refresh whatever minor tasks I need to be aware of each day.

Grading Table: This section helped my trading so much. For starters, each morning I would do a premarket “temp check”. Something I will write more on in the future. But essentially, each morning I would grade my readiness to trade. This was based on Oura ring sleep score, health, focus, and mental mindset pre-market. If I was hungover, sick, or tired I would of course get a lower rating. If focused and in the zone, I would get an A. I would then use this grade, in conjunction with how opportunistic the market might be that day, to PROACTIAVELY decide how much I would risk that day.

Then, I would carve the rest of the day into four segments. After each of these segments, I would grade myself on the 3 main categories that would usually lead to success for me : only trading the “Plays of the Day”, sizing properly, and only be involved in trades that are going in my favor.

The beauty of these segments is it would allow me to make tweaks and changes throughout the day and prevent mistakes from snowballing. Am I overtrading? Am I rage trading? Most importantly, even if I botched a segment, I could still win the day by correcting course. Finally, these segments allowed for a nice mental break from staying focused all day and would usually be accompanied by a stretch / short walk/ water break.

What I learned / Improved Upon: Here I would catalog all my process improvements from the day in an attempt to be “1% better”. This would be a way of making sure I didn’t leave the office without taking intentional meaningful action to improve that day and it would also serve as a log for me to look back on and feel good about all the process wins I made each day.

Changes I Need to Make: So many traders don’t reflect until the end of the month. The amount of times I’ve seen traders make the same mistake for days or weeks at a time without noticing or attempting to course-correct is staggering. Each day I would use this to consciously reflect about any changes I need to make for next day. Sometimes there was nothing, but often I would be aware of mental biases or frustrations creeping in.

Overview: Summary of the day along with day’s PNL. Sometimes this was a couple sentences, sometimes a few paragraphs. But I would talk about what was working or not working and other observations.

Ticker Writeups: This section I would paste the chart of any trade I wanted to document. Sometimes this would be accompanied with a write-up, sometimes not. Really depends how active and important the day was.