How to journal ICT trades: a step-by-step routine

Why ICT traders need a journal

ICT’s material is huge, and most of it is taught as ideas to test, not rules to copy. Two traders can watch the same lessons and end up trading different kill zones, different entries and different markets. The only way to know which version is yours is to write it down and count it.

ICT says so himself. In a 2023 lesson he tells students that every day is a day they must journal, and that the students who became consistent were the ones who journaled and back-tested daily. In 2024 he compares a trader’s journal to the key performance indicators a business watches. A journal also protects you from memory: you remember the big winner and forget the five small losses that came before it.

Step 1: before the session

Write a short plan before you look for a trade. Five lines are enough:

1. Bias: are you looking for higher or lower prices today, and why? Start from the weekly and daily charts, as ICT does, not the 1-minute.
2. Draw on liquidity: where is price most likely to go next? ICT’s draw is usually the obvious one: an old high or low with stops beyond it, or an unfilled gap. Name one level.
3. Key levels: the previous day’s high and low, the Asia and London highs and lows, the midnight open and the 09:30 open. ICT insists you know the midnight opening price of whatever you trade.
4. News: what is on the economic calendar, and when? A big release at 08:30 or 10:00 changes how the morning trades.
5. Kill zone and model: which window will you trade, and which setup are you waiting for? Outside that window and that setup, you do nothing. The kill zone clock shows the windows in your own time zone.

Step 2: at entry

Record the trade while it happens, not from memory in the evening:

• Time in New York time, so trades from different days compare. See ICT kill zones for why the clock matters.
• Trigger: what made the setup valid. A liquidity sweep, a sharp displacement, a Judas swing.
• Entry array: where you got in. A fair value gap, an order block, a breaker, the midpoint of a gap. If you trade PD arrays, note whether it sat in premium or discount.
• Stop and target as prices, with the reason for each. A target is a level, such as the pre-market low, not a hope.
• A screenshot with the levels drawn. ICT asks students to explain a trade before it happens; a marked chart is that explanation.

An NQ example: one trade, journaled

1. Trigger (09:50): NQ runs above the London high at 25,043.25 to 25,049.50 and closes back under it at 25,038.25. The buy stops above the London high are taken. At 10:00 a sharp drop leaves a bearish fair value gap from 25,016.75 to 25,026.25.
2. Entry (10:10): price returns to the middle of the gap. Short at 25,021.50, stop at 25,051.75, just above the sweep’s high. Risk: 30.25 points, which is 1R.
3. Target (10:35): price reaches the NY pre-market low at 24,959.00, where the sell stops were. Exit there: 62.50 points, about 2.1R, in 25 minutes.

Written up, the journal entry reads like this:

• Plan: bearish bias; draw on liquidity the pre-market low, 24,959.00; window NY AM; model: sweep of a session high, then a gap entry.
• Trade: short NQ 10:10; trigger, sweep of the London high; entry, the gap’s midpoint; stop 25,051.75; target 24,959.00.
• Result: +2.1R. Rules followed: all. Felt: calm. Grade: A, because the plan was written before 09:30 and every step matched it.

The grade judges how you traded, not how much you made. A losing trade that followed the plan can still be an A; a winner taken outside your window is a C. To turn the 30.25-point risk into a contract size, use the futures position size calculator.

Step 3: after the close

• Result in R, not only in dollars. R lets you compare a 1-contract day with a 3-contract day.
• How far it went: the most it moved for you and against you. In a 2020 lesson ICT tells students to log the points risked and gained, how long the trade took and how much drawdown it had.
• Rules followed: yes or no for each rule of the setup. One “no” is worth more attention than the P&L.
• Emotions: one or two words, such as calm, rushed, fear of missing out. Patterns show up after a few weeks.
• Grade the execution from A to C, and write one sentence on what you would repeat or change.

Step 4: the weekly review

Once a week, sort the trades three ways: by kill zone, by setup and by confluence (the trigger and entry you tagged). Look for the group that pays you and the group that costs you. Many traders find one window does most of the work, or that one entry type quietly loses.

Add the setups you missed and any back-testing from the week. ICT is strict about honest back-testing: count the setups that failed too, and test with the worst entry your rules allow, not the best one. End the review with one change for next week, and only one.

Where ICT’s advice differs over the years

ICT agrees with himself that you must journal. He is less consistent about how to treat feelings in it. In 2020 he tells students to write their notes with no emotion at all and not to fill the journal with toxic thoughts, while still pulling out what made them wrong. In 2023 he asks for every annotation to be written positively, as if you saw the move coming, and to record mistakes as things you are grateful to have learned. In 2024 he lists monitoring your psychology among a trader’s key measures.

Most of his journaling advice is about a study journal: old charts, annotated after the fact, to train your eye. A trade log is a different record. Our suggestion: keep the study notes positive, as he asks, but record your real trades exactly as they happened, including the emotion, because that is the part you are trying to change.

Common mistakes

• Writing the plan after the trade.

  A plan written afterwards always matches the trade. Write bias, draw and levels before the kill zone opens.

• Logging dollars only.

  Dollars change with size. Log R, so a careful small trade and a large one can be compared.

• Tagging setups differently every day.

  "FVG", "gap" and "imbalance" become three groups you can never compare. Pick one name per thing and keep it.

• Reviewing only the losers.

  Winners taken against your rules teach bad habits. Grade every trade on the process.

• Changing five things after a bad week.

  Change one thing, then let the next week's journal show whether it helped.

How to run this routine in daqverse