Re: Free Excel trading log template (V3)
Here's the latest version of a free excel tool I developed to analyze each trade’s risk factors, in the form of reward/risk ratio and R multiple. It is also its useful when testing new trading systems to gauge their expectancy.
Feel free to use it as you wish. Its not great for intraday trading as it takes too long to input data but for longer term trades helps me to be mindful of capital protection.
A few points:
• The initial entries are fictitious – just used for testing (It will be better to just overwrite them rather than deleting them and risk losing the formulas).
• The yellow columns are the only ones that require data input.
• Cell error messages (e.g. #div/0) relate to empty or ‘0’ content cells and correct themselves on corresponding data entry.
A few column explanations:
Reward / Risk ratio
A ratio used by many investors to compare the expected returns of an investment to the amount of risk undertaken to capture these returns. This ratio is calculated mathematically by dividing the amount of profit the trader expects to have made when the position is closed (i.e. the reward) by the amount he or she stands to lose if price moves in the unexpected direction (i.e. the risk).
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/riskrewardratio.asp
Com+Stamp
Commission fees plus stamp duty. (Commission fixed at 2x£8. Stamp duty 0.5 of purchase cost)
Net P/L
Profit or loss including commission and fees.
R multiple
R Multiple: P&L divided by the Initial Risk.
“You want your losses to be 1R or less. That means if you say you’ll get out of a stock when it drops $50 to $40, then you actually GET OUT when it drops to $40. If you get out when it drops to $30, then your loss is much bigger than 1R.
It’s twice what you were planning to lose or a 2R loss. And you want to avoid that possibility at all costs.
You want your profits to ideally be much bigger than 1R. For example, you buy a stock at $8 and plan to get out if it drops to $6, so that your initial 1R loss is $2 per share. You now make a profit of $20 per share. Since this is 10 times what you were planning to risk we call it a 10R profit.”
http://www.iitm.com/sm-risk-and-r-multiples.htm
Expectancy
Average (mean) of the R-multiple.
Expectancy gives you the average R-value that you can expect from the system over many trades. Put another way, expectancy tells you how much you can expect to make on the average, per dollar risked, over a number of trades.
At the heart of all trading is the simplest of all concepts—that the bottom-line results must show a positive mathematical expectation in order for the trading method to be profitable. ~ Chuck Branscomb
http://www.iitm.com/sm-Expectancy.htm
In its creation, two other trading logs, found online, were referenced:
1. Trader Mike. (Trading journal.xls)
http://tradermike.net/2006/01/my_trading_journal_excel_spreadsheet/
2. Clambill. (Trading Log.xls)
http://www.trade2win.com/boards/trading-software/36117-free-spreadsheet-trading-log.html
Hope you find it useful
