Introduction. Figure 1: Insight Sections Shown at the Top of the Screen after Log In

Transcription

1 User s Guide

2 Introduction Insight Trading Journal is much more than your average trading journal. When used properly it has the potential to increase your profits, save you a lot of time, and increase your discipline. In addition to the guidance found here, there are instructional videos on our Facebook page and YouTube channel. Links to many of these videos can be found within this user s guide where appropriate. Increase Your Profits: Insight has many different data analysis tools that allow you to take a deep dive into your trading and understand areas where you need to improve. Making just one adjustment to your trading by using Insight s tools can easily pay for Insight almost immediately. Save You Time: Our memories aren t as good as we think they are. Imagine having just 100 trades where you had applied a particular strategy. How much time would it take to go back and see how well you managed them, and try to determine whether there was perhaps a more profitable management approach. Insight s Strategy Tester, Percent Captured Reports, and All Trades Report can show you how well you are managing your trades in seconds, saving you hundreds of hours in trade follow up. Increase Your Discipline: Nothing changes a person s habits more quickly than seeing something first hand. Seeing is believing. When you track your trades you start to realize things you hadn t before. Maybe a strategy you love is really just breakeven over time, or maybe one of your most profitable strategies could be a lot more profitable if you held for larger targets. Insight can help show you these truths, and help you stick to a more disciplined trading approach. This user s guide is broken down into six sections, one section for each of the sections shown in figure 1. Account Strategies Sources Tags (Custom Tags) Trades Analysis Figure 1: Insight Sections Shown at the Top of the Screen after Log In 2

3 Insight s Active Help on Demand You ll notice at the bottom of Insight there is a question mark. This is Insight s help on demand feature. If you click on the question mark at the bottom of the screen it will open a help bar. In this bar you will find some instructions and tips on how to use Insight when you click on various input fields within Insight. See figure 2 below for an example of help on demand when you click on Sharpe Ratio within the Overview Report. Figure 2: Insight Active Help on Demand Example Insight s Smart Screen Size Insight was designed to optimize the use of desktop screen space, and Insight will look great on your tablet and even your phone. This is perfect for traders who want to evaluate their results on the go using their tablet or enter their trades on a tablet next to their PC. Also, because the features on the screen will adjust to the screen size automatically, Insight is also perfect for traders who have limited screen real estate which is often the case! Smooth Intuitive Single Page Navigation Insight was designed with single page navigation. While most web sites jump around from page to page, once you re logged into Insight, you ll always remain on the same webpage. This makes for a very smooth and user friendly experience. You have to experience it to really appreciate it. Insight s Dynamic Saving With Insight, you ll never have to click save. As soon as you enter something into Insight, it s automatically saved for you. If you are used to saving all the time, it may take some getting used to, but once you do, you ll love it! 3

4 Insight Trading Journal User s Guide - Table of Contents ACCOUNT 5 1. ACCOUNT STATUS 5 2. PROFILE 5 STRATEGIES 6 1. ADD NEW STRATEGIES 6 2. TAG YOUR TRADES WITH ONE OF YOUR STRATEGIES OR NO STRATEGY 6 SOURCES 8 1. ADD YOUR TRADE SOURCES 8 TAGS 9 1. CREATE CUSTOM TAGS 9 2. TAG YOUR TRADES WITH YOUR CUSTOM TAGS 9 3. FILTER AND ANALYZE YOUR TRADING RESULTS USING CUSTOM TAGS 10 TRADES MANUALLY ENTERING TRADES MAX MOVE (ALSO REFERRED TO AS MAXIMUM FAVORABLE EXCURSION) THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AN ERROR AND NOTIFICATION IMPORTING TRADES 13 ANALYSIS THE VARIOUS SECTIONS UNDER ANALYSIS INSIGHT S ANALYSIS FILTERS INSIGHT S OVERVIEW REPORT, UNDER THE SUMMARY SECTION OF ANALYSIS INSIGHT S ALL TRADES REPORT, UNDER THE SUMMARY SECTION OF ANALYSIS INSIGHT S PERCENT CAPTURED REPORT, UNDER THE SUMMARY SECTION OF ANALYSIS INSIGHT S DAY OF WEEK AND TIME OF DAY REPORTS, UNDER THE COMPARISON SECTION OF ANALYSIS INSIGHT S STRATEGY COMPARISON REPORT, UNDER THE COMPARISON SECTION OF ANALYSIS INSIGHT S CURVE GENERATOR INSIGHT S STRATEGY TESTER 22 4

5 ACCOUNT 1. Account Status Here you will find information regarding whether or not your account has been activated. If you have created a free account and have yet to activate it, you will see the message shown in figure 3. The free trial version of Insight Trading Journal gives you full access to all of Insight s features; the only restriction is that the analysis of your trading results is limited to 20 trades. There are two ways to activate your Insight account and gain access to analysis of unlimited trades. The first is to buy Insight directly through the website by clicking Buy Now. Once Buy Now is clicked, there will be an option to enter a Promotion Code, if you have one. The second is to purchase an Activation Code from one of our partners. Figure 3: Account page, Free Trial 2. Profile Also under the account page you will find your account profile. Here you can change your address and password. 5

6 STRATEGIES 1. Add New Strategies Under the strategies section you can add each of your trading strategies. Two strategies are shown in figure 4, as an example. There is also a section for any notes you may have on each strategy, such as the strategy s trading rules. You can add unlimited strategies and also change the name of your strategies at any time. Figure 4: Strategies page 2. Tag Your Trades with One of Your Strategies or No Strategy Once your strategies are entered into Insight, they will appear under the Trades section in the Select Strategy drop down menu. You will notice that under this drop down menu there is an option to select No Strategy. No Strategy reporting is a built-in feature of Insight. If you take a trade and upon your trade follow up you realize that it did not meet the rules of your pre-planned strategy, then select No Strategy from the drop down menu. 6

7 Insight Tip No Strategy Reporting No Strategy reporting is extremely important to understand and use appropriately. The reason why traders should track their trades by strategy is so they can use Insight s many analysis tools to help them improve each strategy. For example, you can use the Strategy Tester to evaluate your trade management or the Time of Day report to evaluate how the strategy performs during different times of day. If you categorize a trade as a Morning Gap Long because at the time of the trade you believed it was, but later you reviewed the trade and realized that you broke some of your strategy s rules, you should now categorize the trade as No Strategy (see figure below). By applying this approach, your analysis of your Morning Gap Long strategy will be more accurate. 7

8 SOURCES 1. Add Your Trade Sources Under the Sources section you can add each of your trade sources. A trade source is who found your trade. Many traders trade in an online trading room or perhaps they are in an office with other traders. If someone else found the trade you took, add them as a trade source. This will allow you to analyze the results when you take their trades. Figure 6: Trade Source Section Insight Tip How to Properly Use Source Reporting Trading is a game of odds. All great traders have losing trades and many great traders have a lot of losing trades. Success is not about avoiding losses, it is about keeping loses small and having the occasional large winner so you come out profitable over time. Keep this in mind when taking trades from another source. If you are randomly taking trades from an online moderator for example, but not taking all of the moderator s trades, then you will not achieve the same results and may very well lose money when the moderator makes money. Also, any trade you take should be a strategy of yours too. For example, taking random trades you don t typically take because you are bored is not the proper way to use a trading room. Use the additional eyes in the trading room to find trades that you d take anyway, then categorize that trade with the trade source so you know how dependent you are on that source finding your trades. 8

9 TAGS 1. Create Custom Tags Creating Custom Tags is a perfect way to track and analyze anything you want. Custom tags are created just like strategies and trade sources. An example of a custom tag can be found in figure 7. Figure 7: Custom Tags Section Showing the Custom Tag Entered Too Soon 2. Tag Your Trades with Your Custom Tags Once your custom tags are entered into Insight, they will appear under the Trades section in the Custom Tags drop down menu, as shown in figure 8 (below). To access the custom tag drop down menu simply click on Custom Tags. Custom tags that are selected for the given trade have the switch to the right, as shown for the custom tag below, Entered too soon. Figure 8: Trades Section Showing the Custom Tag Entered Too Soon 9

10 3. Filter and Analyze your Trading Results using Custom Tags Perhaps we are jumping a little ahead here, but now is a good time to introduce you to Insight s analysis tools and filters. There will be much more on this later. Shown in figure 9, you can see that we have filtered for only trades that have been tagged with the custom tag Entered Too Soon (note the filter within the red box). Notice that all other filters say Any Direction or Any Timeframe. This means that trades in any direction or any timeframe will be included in the analysis, however, only trades that were tagged with Entered Too Soon are included. The report shown is Insight s Overview Report. A video on Insight s Overview Report can be found on YouTube or our Facebook page. Click here to access the video. Notice that this trader is not profitable when Entering Too Soon. This gives the trader valuable information and now they now that they either need to stop entering too soon, obtain more data to see if the poor performance continues, or change another aspect of how they are entering so that the results become profitable. Insight s Overview Report is just one of many reports and analysis tools. To watch a video on how to use many of Insight s tools together, including an example of using the custom tag Entered Too Soon, visit our Facebook page or YouTube channel. You may also click here. Figure 9: Filtering Results for Trades Tagged with the Custom Tag Entered Too Soon 10

11 TRADES 1. Manually Entering Trades To manually enter a trade simply slick on + Add trade under the Trades section. There you will find all the different pieces of information you can record for each trade. If you have questions on what to enter in each field, Insight s active help on demand provides basic explanations. Included below are instructions for selected features of the Trades section of Insight Max Move (also referred to as Maximum Favorable Excursion) The Max Move is the maximum value of each trade prior to the trade hitting your stop loss. The Max Move field is important to enter because it allows Insight the ability to evaluate your trade management against potential results. Insight s Strategy Tester, Percent Captured Report, Curve Generator, and All Trades Report depend on this field being populated. If a trade never hits your stop loss, then you have to use some judgment on what to enter in this field. Some examples of how to best use this field if your stop loss isn t hit are included below. Example 1: You enter a day trade with no intentions of holding overnight. You enter the trade at with a stop loss at The trade goes on to trade up to and then back down to , before rallying and closing at It never traded down to your stop loss of The next day the stock continued higher. What should you enter in the Max Move field? Answer 1: Enter The fact that the stock traded higher the next day is not relevant because this was a day trade, not an overnight position. Example 2: You enter a swing trade at with a stop loss at You typically only hold swing trades 2 to 5 days and have difficultly holding through big drawdowns. This stock went to after 5 days. After 10 more days the stock traded down to but never hit your stop loss, before taking another month to trade up to What is an appropriate value to enter in the Max Move field for this trade? Answer 2: It s likely most appropriate to enter for the max move. This is because the stock went to in 5 days, which is about the max of your planned holding period. Also, since holding through huge drawdowns is difficult for you, you would have had a hard time holding through the huge drawdown to

12 Insight Tip Using Max Move Appropriately Another way to think of the Max Move is to think of it as the maximum move you could have reasonably expected to capture with your trading plan and your own trading psychology. The example below illustrates this point. You enter a swing trade at , with a stop loss at You risk $1000 per trade (i.e. your risk unit is $1000). It moves to almost immediately (up $4000) and you exit the trade per your trading plan at It then moves back down to the next day. The instrument than chops around for two months between and almost hitting your stop loss several times before moving higher over the course of several months to Although is technically the maximum move to date it s unlikely that you would have been able to hold through all the chop to reach that target, therefore, the most likely appropriate value to enter in this field is However, if you have extremely good patience and your trading plan is such that you expect to hold for lengthy periods of time through a lot of chop, then perhaps could be entered. You need to ultimately decide what the most appropriate value for this field is The Difference Between an Error and Notification Insight will check trades for errors and notifications and give you symbols next to a given trade for either one. The error icon is an exclamation point and the notification icon is a flag. An error is an indication that something is sufficiently wrong with the information in the trade that the trade cannot be included in your analysis. For example, the total exit share size is greater than the total entry share size. A notification is simply an indication that there is something still open with the trade, for example, perhaps you have not entered the Max Move yet for that particular trade. Insight Tip Filtering for all trades with an error or notification The Trades section has a field to search for trades. This is very useful as you get more and more trades into Insight. To search for all trades with an error you can type error into the search field. To search for all trades with a notification, you can type notification in the search field. This tip can also be found in Insight s active help on demand bar when you click in the search field. 12

13 2. Importing Trades We made trade importing very easy. Under the Trades section simply click on Import trades from CSV file. When you do this, you will see a list of supported brokers. Simply click on your broker. You can also watch a video on trade importing by visiting our Facebook page, YouTube channel, or by clicking here. If you don t see your broker on our supported broker s list, please us at support@insighttradingjournal.com, and we would be happy to work with you to add your broker. Insight Tip Why we recommend manually entering your trades While auto-important is a very popular feature, we still recommend manually entering trades. The reason is simple. There is some very important information that your broker just won t have. For example, how would your broker know what strategy the trade was, what timeframe the trade was based on, what the trade source was, or what custom tags might apply. For this reason we recommend manually entering your trades each day while you trade or after the trading day. The alternative is either going back later and entering this information or not doing it at all. If you don t do it all, you are putting yourself at a huge disadvantage to all those traders that are analyzing their trading in more detail. If you want to thrive in this business, let alone survive, you must be willing to put in a little extra work this is especially true when it comes to trading follow up, chart reviews, and analysis of your trading results. 13

14 ANALYSIS 1. The various sections under analysis There are four sections under the main Analysis section of Insight. These sections are Summary, Comparisons, Curve Generator, and Strategy Tester. These sections can be seen below in figure 10 under the filters. Insight Tip Viewing your analysis tools in dollars or risk units At the top center of Insight s analysis section, you have the ability to select a $ or the letter R. See figure 10 below. This allows the various reports and tools to be displayed in dollars or Risk Units. If you don t know what a Risk Unit is, see the next Insight Tip for an explanation. For traders who have different strategies that risk different amounts, it will be more appropriate to view your reports in Risk Units. For example, if you have some day trading strategies that risk $50 per trade and others that risk $250 per trade, viewing a comparison by strategy in risk units will provide a more accurate assessment of which strategies are performing best. 2. Insight s Analysis Filters Insight s filters are what allow you to analyze every area of your trading. Shown in figure 10 are the filters you can choose from, including the custom tag filters which make Insight fully customizable. Filters apply to all of Insight s analysis tools when one or more filter is selected. Below are the filters you can choose from. Direction (long, short) Timeframe Strategy Source Any Custom Tag Date Range Quarter Earnings Season Non-Earnings Season Any combination of filters Figure 10: Insight s Filters and Four Sections of Analysis 14

15 Insight Tip The Risk Unit (R) and Reward-to-Risk Professional traders typically don t speak in terms of percent gains; this is reserved for investors and talking heads on TV. Understanding and using the risk unit is important for the aspiring professional trader. To have a risk unit, you have to have an entry price and a stop loss. Without a stop loss, it is impossible to have a risk unit. Let s look at the example below. In this example, the trader has entered this trade at and placed a stop loss at This means the trader has risked $1.00 per share. The trader has a share size of 1000 shares so the risk unit on this trade is $ The next step is to evaluate this trade s reward-to-risk. You can see that the trade s target price is approximately two risk units away from the entry price. This means that the trade has a reward-to-risk of 2-to-1. Insight Tip Don t underestimate the importance of reward-to-risk Trading is a game of odds. Even the prettiest looking trade with a poor reward-to-risk should almost certainly be passed on. Of course there are exceptions to every rule in life, but in general you should only be taking trades that have a minimum reward-to-risk ratio of two. This way, when you do get a trade that reaches its full potential, it will pay for many of the inevitable losings trades that should cost you no more than one risk unit each. 15

16 3. Insight s Overview Report, Under the Summary Section of Analysis Insight s overview report contains stats that every trader should know about their trading. At a minimum every trader should understand their overall batting average and sharpe ratio. The incremental and/or cumulative profit may be turned on or off by clicking the legend below the chart. To watch a video on this report click here. Figure 11: Insight s Overview Report 16

17 4. Insight s All Trades Report, Under the Summary Section of Analysis Insight s all trades report shows each trade s net profit and each trade s max profit. It is a very powerful yet simple way to evaluate how well you are managing your trades. You ll notice in figure 12 that the black bar above the white bar represents each trade s maximum profit potential, while the white bar represents the trade s net profit. You can turn on/off either series by clicking on it in the legend to the right of the chart. Figure 12: Insight s All Trades Report, Includes Net Profit and Max Profit 5. Insight s Percent Captured Report, Under the Summary Section of Analysis Insight s percent captured report shows you what fraction of trades are capturing each percent captured level. This report uses percent captured levels of 10% and rounds down. For example, if a trade captures 48% of the maximum move, then that trade will be in the 40% level on this report. This report also only includes winning trades. Figure 13: Insight s Percent Captured Report Insight Tip What is a Good Percent Captured Typically, you should strive to capture between 30% - 60% of your trade s maximum move on average. If you are capturing under 30% on average and as a majority of your trades, you may want to see if you can develop a more profitable trade management approach. 17

18 6. Insight s Comparison Reports Insight s comparison reports can help you see where your trading strengths are and where you need to improve. They include the following reports: Direction (long vs. short) Day of Week Time of Day Timeframe Strategy Trade Source Some examples of these reports are shown below. 7. Insight s Day of Week and Time of Day Reports, Under the Comparison Section of Analysis These two reports will ensure you understand any trends in your performance throughout the week and throughout the trading day. Since Insight is designed for swing trading and day trading, the Day of Week and Time of Day reports exclude any trade that has a timeframe assigned as Daily. This is because these are assumed to be overnight (e.g. a swing trade) trades, and by excluding them these reports will remain accurate for analyzing day trading performance. Figure 14: Insight s Day of Week and Time of Day Reports 18

19 8. Insight s Strategy Comparison Report, Under the Comparison Section of Analysis This report allows you to see how each of your strategies compares to the others in terms of performance. Keep in mind that if you risk different dollar amounts for each strategy, this report will be more appropriately viewed in risk units. This report also shows you how No Strategy trades are performing. Figure 15: Insight s Strategy Comparison report Insight Tip Using No Strategy Reporting to Develop Discipline When you are first starting out trading, it is very difficult to know what trades to take. You likely just received an education and have many tools at your disposal. Don t worry, this is normal. However, during this period it is very important that you do as little damage to your account as possible while developing your skills and learning what you are good at. You can minimize the damage by recognizing that you will very likely end up taking trades that are not in your plan. When you do take these, risk a very small amount (e.g. $20) and categorize each trade as No Strategy within Insight. When you do this, it s likely you will begin to see how damaging these results are, and this will begin the process of changing your psychology to a more disciplined approach. As you progress as a trader, you should be taking fewer and fewer No Strategy trades and begin to focus more and more on what is working best for you. 19

20 9. Insight s Curve Generator Insight s Curve Generator is a tool used to plot equity and risk unit curves alongside potential profit curves. A potential profit curve is a theoretical curve that is plotted using various percent captured levels. For example, if you plot the 30% capture curve alongside your actual equity curve, the 30% capture curve would represent what your equity curve would look like had you captured 30% of every trade s move. The Curve Generator only includes trades where a max move was entered. To plot various percent captured curves, or potential profit curves, simply click on the series to the right of the chart. Figure 16: Insight s Curve Generator, Showing only a Cumulative Net Profit Risk Unit Curve Important Note: It is worth noting here that while Insight s Percent Captured report only includes winning trades (it is used to analyze how well you are managing winners), the Curve Generator includes losing trades as well. It was designed this way because otherwise the equity curves plotted would always be rising, which wouldn t be helpful or accurate. Due to this, a lower percent captured is generally acceptable. While a percent captured above 40% is pretty good on the Percent Captured Report, it is great for the Curve Generator this is because losers are included (as a percent captured of 0%), which brings the average percent captured down. 20

21 Insight Tip Using the Curve Generator to Evaluate Improvement Over Time One way to use the Curve Generator for more than plotting your risk unit or equity curves is to plot these curves alongside some potential profit curves and see if you are improving over time. Let s look at an example. In the first figure below you will see that this trader is capturing on average 20% of the move on all trades for the strategy plotted, including losers being counted as 0% capture. For the strategy plotted, you can see that the performance is pretty consistent and the trade management approach is performing consistently by capturing about 20% over time. Now in this next figure, you will see that the trader s net profit curve is getting much closer to the 10% capture line. This alerts the trader that their performance is getting worse. Now you might be thinking that any drawdown will alert the trader to this, but that is not necessarily true. Notice that the 20% capture curve plotted is still rising pretty aggressively, this shows that there is still plenty of profit potential in these trades. At the very least this trader should do a little extra trade follow up to see what is going on before this drawdown gets worse. 21

22 10. Insight s Strategy Tester Insight s Strategy Tester is a unique and easy to use tool that compares your actual trade management results to an all-or-nothing approach. Let s take a look at what it includes; please refer to figure 17 below. The chart on the left shows you what percent of your trades reached various target levels. For example, you can see in figure 17 that about 30% of this trader s trades reached a 2R target level; that is, about 30% of this trader s trades reached a reward-to-risk level of two. You can also see that very few trades reached 4R or greater. This tells the trader that this strategy isn t very conducive to the home run trade. The strategy is far more profitable when going for a base hit and exiting the trade near 2R. The chart on the right shows your actual results as a horizontal black line. The white area chart shows potential results at various target levels. Anything above the black line is money left on the table. Leaving money on the table is a fact of trading, it can t be avoided; however, if there is too much white area above the black line the trader should consider changing their trade management. For example, had the trader used a 2R all-or-nothing management approach, the results could have been 19R, instead of only 8.09R. The best trade management approach is also summarized beneath the charts. To watch a short video on Insight s Strategy Tester, click here. Figure 17: Insight s Strategy Tester 22

23 Insight Tip Using the Strategy Tester to Improve Your Trade Management The Strategy Tester compares your actual trade management to an all-or-nothing (AON) approach. The AON approach is a type of trade management that does nothing, and allows the trade to either reach its target or its stop loss. Using an AON approach is not necessarily practical, because it can be very hard psychologically to watch a trade move in its intended direction and to do nothing for a long period of time. Due to this, use the Strategy Tester as a starting point for evaluating your trade management. It s not necessary to switch your trade management to an AON approach just because the Strategy tester compares your management to AON. However, if you are routinely not capturing enough of your trades and leaving too much money on the table, a management adjustment is likely necessary. 23