The article will show you how to create a Forex Trading Journal in Excel. Forex Trading (Also known as Foreign Exchange Trading) is the marketplace where national currencies of different countries are exchanged. People do business overseas and make transactions throughout continents and thus Foreign Exchange has become the biggest liquid asset market in the world. There are a lot of websites that can provide you with Foreign Exchange data, but you can have your own journal using Microsoft Excel. The advantage of using Excel is that you can work offline with the Foreign Exchange data. Please stay tuned and go through this article to get some free templates for the Forex Trading Journal.
How to Create a Forex Trading Journal in Excel: 2 Ways
In the following picture, I’ve shown you a typical Forex Trading Journal. You can see there are several parameters regarding the Foreign Exchange data. We need the values of Size-Volume of the lot, traders’ expectation parameters Long or Short, Entry, Stop Loss, and Take Profit values of the currency.
I’m going to share a little note on Long and Short terms in case you forget about them. When the traders expect the asset price high they own the business security and this means that they go Long position. On the other hand, if the traders feel insecure about the price fall, then their position refers to the Short position.
1. Using a Simple Excel Sheet to Create a Forex Trading Journal
In this section, you will see the process of building up a simple Forex Trading Journal. Let’s see the description below.
Steps:
- First, make a spreadsheet like the following image. Insert the Initial and Maximum
- After that, we will create some Data Validation. This will make our Trading Journal look more convenient.
- To create the Data Validation list for the currency in cell C5, select it and then choose Data >> Data Validation.
- Next, the Data Validation window will appear. Select List from the Allow section and type the currency pairs in the Source
- Drag the Fill Handle icon downwards to autofill the lower cells with this Data Validation
You can see the currency pairs if you click on the drop down icon shown in the following image.
- Similarly, create another Data Validation list for the Long and Short positions of the traders.
- After that, there is one more thing you need to apply before entering your data. We are here calculating the Risk/Reward ratio which gives you the idea of winning or losing a risk in the Foreign Exchange
=IF(D5="","",(H5-F5)/(F5-G5))
The formula uses the IF function and returns the Risk/Reward ratio by using the Entry, Stop Loss and Take Profit values. If this ratio is greater than 1 then the Risk is higher than the Reward, but if it’s less than 1 then the Reward is positive, meaning the risk would be worth taking.
- Thereafter, insert the data according to the market infrastructure. Here I’ve put some random values. You can see that the R/R ratio (Risk/Reward) is 2.
The following image is filled with some values that can be related to the practical marketplace.
By following this approach, you can easily create a Forex Trading Journal in Excel.
2. Using an Excel Table to Create a Forex Trading Journal
The template we’ve shown you in Section 1 can be made through an Excel table that will be more dynamic. Let’s go through the simple discussion below.
Steps:
- First, follow the steps of Section 1 up to the formula part.
- Next, select the range of cells and then go to Insert >> Table.
- A dialog box will pop up. Make sure you select My table has headers and click OK.
- After that, your data will convert to a table.
- Next, insert the Forex data that you obtained from the survey. I’ve put some random convenient values in the table.
- You will see the advantage in this step. Whenever you insert an entry in the row adjacent to the first row, it will automatically update the Data Validation lists or formulas.
Insert a new entry and you will get the Risk/Reward for that entry.
Thus you can create a Forex Trading Journal with the help of a table. You won’t need to use the Fill Handle or AutoFill process while using a table. You can operate the procedures infinite times.
Conclusion
The article provides you with a simple free template to create a Forex Trading Journal in Excel so that you can build a new one on your own. If you have any better methods or questions or feedback regarding this article, please share them in the comment box. This will help me enrich my upcoming articles.
Related Articles
- How to Make Journal Entries in Excel
- How to Make a Trading Journal in Excel
- How to Create a Bullet Journal in Excel
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Mislim da vam ovde u tabeli fali smer trgovine (BUY ili SELL)
Dear GORAN ZORIC,
Thank you for your comment! We are glad you took the time to review the article. Regarding the trade direction (BUY or SELL), it is actually represented in the Long / Short (L/S) column in the trading journal template. The trade direction entry can be either a “Buy” (long) or “Sell” (short) and the template will automatically add this field after you enter your entry and exit prices. We apologize for any confusion and hope this clarifies the matter. Thank you for bringing this to our attention.
Regards,
Yousuf Khan (ExcelDemy Team)
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