The 8-Section Trading Review Template That Replaces Your Journal

Most trading journals are free-form. Open a note, type what happened, close it.

Six months later, you have 120 entries with no consistent format. You cannot search them. You cannot compare Tuesday to Thursday. You cannot query "show me every gap-fade session where VWAP rejected twice."

A structured review is a database entry. Each section is a field. Fields are searchable, sortable, and comparable. That is how patterns surface across dozens of sessions instead of hiding in paragraphs of prose.

Here are the 8 sections. The whole thing takes 15 minutes right after the session close.

Section 1: Pre-Review

What: Your bias, key levels, and expected scenarios. Written BEFORE the market opens.

Why: This captures your hypothesis so you can compare it to reality. Without it, hindsight bias rewrites your memory.

Example:

• -Overnight: H 5435, L 5418 (range: 17 ticks)
• -Key levels: 5420 (yesterday close), 5430 (rejected 3x yesterday)
• -Bias: Neutral-to-long (held above 5420 overnight)
• -Scenarios: (1) If gap < 0.3%, watch for OR breakout above 5435. (2) If gap > 0.5%, watch for fade to VWAP. (3) If opens below 5420, flip bearish.

Section 2: Easy Money Trade

What: The obvious setup you identified. The trade you should never miss.

Why: Forces you to recognize high-probability opportunities, whether you took them or not.

Example:

• -Setup: Gap fade to VWAP
• -ES gapped to 5440 (+0.8%), faded to VWAP at 5428 by 9:35
• -Entry: Short 5428 on VWAP rejection. Stop: 5433. Target: 5418.
• -R:R: 1:2

Section 3: Key Moments

What: 3-5 turning points during the session.

Why: These are decision points. Did you recognize them? Did you act correctly?

For each moment: time, price, what happened, what you did, what you should have done.

Example:

• -9:42 / 5428: VWAP rejection after 2nd touch. Entered short. Good entry, waited for confirmation.
• -9:58 / 5418: Hit target, but volume spike on bounce. Exited at target. Should have left a runner -- price went to 5410.

Section 4: Model Performance

What: Which playbook setups fired today, whether you traded them or not.

Why: Tracks which patterns work in the current regime. If you have a playbook of 5 setups, log which ones signaled and which ones worked. Over time, this tells you when the regime is shifting.

Section 5: Invalidation Points

What: The levels where your thesis breaks. Defined BEFORE or during the trade.

Why: Protects you from stubbornly holding a wrong thesis. If you wrote "short thesis invalidates above 5433" and price hits 5434, you have a predefined exit. No negotiating with yourself in real time.

Section 6: Pattern Recognition

What: Similarities to previous sessions. Recurring patterns this week.

Why: This is where multi-day patterns surface. "Today's gap fade looked like Monday and Wednesday." After a week of noting these, you spot patterns that no single-day review would reveal.

Section 7: Conditional Rules

What: IF/THEN statements for next time. The most valuable output of the entire review.

Example:

• -IF gap between 0.6% and 1.0% AND fades to VWAP in first 20 min AND VWAP rejects 2+ times, THEN enter short at 3rd VWAP touch, stop 5 ticks above VWAP, target previous day close.

One to three rules per review. Specific conditions, specific actions, specific invalidation.

Section 8: Lessons and Metadata

What: One-sentence primary lesson. Tags for searchability. A 1-5 rating for how valuable the session was for learning.

Example:

• -Primary lesson: "Gap fades work best when VWAP rejects with confirmation -- do not short first touch."
• -Tags: gap-fade, VWAP, patience, confirmation
• -Rating: 5/5 -- textbook setup, executed well, lesson is clear.

Why Structure Beats Free-Form

Structure forces completeness. A blank page lets you skip the uncomfortable parts -- the invalidation you ignored, the easy money trade you missed, the rule you did not follow. A form with eight sections does not let you hide.

Structure also makes review fast. You are filling in fields, not staring at a blank page wondering what to write. That is why 15 minutes is enough.

And structure makes your reviews a database. After 30 sessions, you can search by tag, filter by pattern, and compare similar setups across weeks. That is when compound learning starts.

Start Tonight

After your next session, fill in four sections to start: Pre-Review, Key Moments, Conditional Rules, and Primary Lesson. That is the minimum viable review. Add the other sections as the habit forms.

Fifteen minutes. Four sections. One rule. That single review is more structured knowledge than most traders accumulate in a month of journaling.