Free Trading Journal Template

Bullion Book Guides · Updated July 2026

Every trading journal - paper, spreadsheet or app - lives or dies by its columns. Track too little and the data answers nothing; track too much and you'll quit by Thursday. These 14 columns are the working set: enough to compute every statistic that matters, small enough to fill in 60 seconds.

The template

Column	Example	Why it's here
Date	2026-07-20	Groups trades by day for calendars and day-of-week stats.
Time In / Time Out	14:32 / 15:10	Hold time, plus hour-of-day performance - one of the most revealing stats there is.
Symbol	XAUUSD	Per-instrument breakdowns; some pairs quietly subsidize others.
Direction	Long	Many traders have a measurable long/short skill gap.
Size (lots)	0.10	Position sizing consistency - erratic sizing hides in dollar P&L.
Entry / Exit price	3984.40 / 3992.10	The trade itself; enables replay on a chart later.
Stop-loss at entry	3975.80	Defines 1R - the unit every trade gets measured in.
Target at entry	4001.00	Planned reward - compare against where you actually exited.
Fees / swap	-1.20	Costs are part of the result; scalpers especially can't skip this.
P&L ($)	+77.00	Use your broker's reported figure so the journal matches your statement.
R-multiple	+0.9R	P&L ÷ risk at entry - decision quality, independent of size.
Setup / tag	London breakout	Buckets trades into comparable groups - the key to finding your edge.
Confidence (1-5)	4	Later, check whether your gut actually predicts anything.
Notes	"Clean setup, followed plan"	One honest sentence on the why and the feeling.

Copy-paste header row

Paste this straight into row 1 of Excel or Google Sheets:

Date,Time In,Time Out,Symbol,Direction,Size,Entry,Exit,Stop Loss,Target,Fees,PnL,R Multiple,Setup,Confidence,Notes

The formulas your spreadsheet needs

With P&L in column L (and wins defined as L > 0):

• Win rate = COUNTIF(L:L,">0") / COUNT(L:L)
• Average win = AVERAGEIF(L:L,">0")  /  Average loss = AVERAGEIF(L:L,"<0")
• Expectancy per trade = win rate × average win + loss rate × average loss
• Profit factor = SUMIF(L:L,">0") / -SUMIF(L:L,"<0") - above 1.0 means your wins outweigh your losses.
• R-multiple per trade = P&L ÷ (entry-to-stop distance × size × contract size). For XAUUSD one lot is 100 oz - forgetting the contract size is the classic gold-spreadsheet bug.

Rules that keep a template alive

1. Log every trade - a journal with holes measures nothing. Bad trades are the most valuable rows in it.
2. Fill it at the close, while the reasoning is honest - not at the end of the week from memory.
3. Never edit history. The stop column holds the stop you placed, not the one you dragged.
4. Review weekly, act monthly - patterns need repetition before they're signals. See why journaling works for what to look for.

Where spreadsheets run out of road

A spreadsheet does the recording; the analysis stays manual. Equity curves, P&L calendars, day × hour heatmaps, per-setup win rates, drawdown - each is another formula or pivot table you maintain by hand, and screenshots and chart replays never fit at all. That's the point where a dedicated journal pays for itself - especially one that's free. Bullion Book uses this exact data model: import your MT4/MT5 history or log trades manually, and every statistic above (plus the ones you'd never build in Sheets) computes automatically. If you trade gold or forex, the gold & forex journaling guide shows the full workflow.