The next big (and one of the most requested) feature of TradesViz is here: custom trading plans and checklists.
We have many many users who felt constraints by the notes and the tags system of journals. They needed a more precise way of recording what happened in a trade or a day. This is exactly the problem trade and day plans in TradesViz solve.
To sum up, you are able to create a custom "plan" that contains a combination of checkboxes, categories, text, or numeric input and attach it to any trade or trading day.
Just like the note templates which we explored in one of our recent blog posts, you can create as many templates of these plans as you want and attach any one plan to a trade or trading day.
On top of this, every stat - i.e every checkbox, numeric or text input can be analyzed with respect to your trading result. We will explore the analysis part in the next blog post. In this post, we will focus on how to create, manage and add plans to your trades and trading days.
First, there are 2 types of plans: plans that you can attach to a day and plans that you can attach to a trade. We split in a similar way the notes and tags are also split for trade/day so that you have fine-grained control of how you want to organize the data in your journal.
To create a plan, head over to your account settings > general settings and click on the "Manage trade plans" (for trade plans) or "Manage day plans" (for day plans) button.
You will be shown a popup with a few options:
- Open an existing plan
- Create a new plan
Here is an example of creating a new plan:
Each plan has the following fields:
- Plan Name
- Plan Conditions (can be one of the following elements)
- Checkbox
- Text input
- Category input
- Numeric input
Checkbox: A very useful and common element for any type of checklist. All you need to do is fill in the text for the checkbox. Here's an example of a few conditions in the plan builder and how it appears when you apply a plan to the trade:
In a trade explore page:
You can do an analysis on the checkboxes used/ticked per plan in the plans analysis section which we will explore in the next blog post.
Text input: Short text - think of this as an alternative notes field or a most specific notes field. You can have multiple text inputs per conditions where each one could be for a particular property of the trade - like risk, profit, market conditions, etc.,
Numeric input: If you ever wanted to add your own custom numeric field for a trade - this is how you would do it. It can be attributes like a particular indicator's value, your max risk on that day, or your trading performance range on a scale of 5, etc., These are all fully analyzable and can be plotted on charts using the pivot grid in the plan analysis section! Remember that plans are not just pieces of info you attach and read - but in TradesViz, we have designed this to be fully queriable, filterable, and analyzable so that every aspect of your trading can be carefully fine-tuned.
Categorical input: This can be text or number - but you can only choose 1 option. Very useful in case you have a list of strategy modifications or you want to make any particular statistic discrete. This can also be analyzed and charted just like the numeric input.
Instead of just having simple checkboxes, we have added other types of input so that you can be more expressive and flexible in noting down exactly how a trade or a trading day went. This also makes things a lot simpler as you have the option to use different types of input for different types of data you want to analyze.
Here's an example of a plan applied to a trade that has all the types of conditions:
This box appears in the trade explore and the day explore page right below the executions/trades section.
Here's a video of adding a plan to a trade:
You will be able to select any plan you want and delete/modify the existing parameters also.
You can also make modifications to a plan's template *after* you have created it and the names/stats will be updated accordingly. For example, deleting a checkbox from a template will remove the checkbox stat from all instances of trades that have this plan. Changing the name of the title of a condition has no effect on the actual input value - it simply changes the name - the same is applicable for choices/options in the category element.
Everything we have mentioned so far is applicable to both day and trade plans.
That's all you need to know about creating, managing, and attaching plans to trades and trading days.
In the upcoming blog post, we will discuss the analytics features of these plans and how you can learn more about factors such as how well you followed your trade plan, etc.,
Like all other parameters that you add to your trade like tag and comment, this is also another parameter that you need to create and add to a trade/trading day that takes a little bit of effort. However, since the plans and even the plan's conditions are analyzable, the amount of insightful data you are generated from just filling in a template for a couple of trades every day/week is immense. We hope our next blog post makes this much clearer with proper examples.
As with most features, TradesViz is the only trading journal to have this feature with this level of flexibility and control. We take trading analysis seriously and we believe this to be one of the must-have features for anyone who is serious about having proper trading rules and strategies. Analyzing your plan's condition stats can even reveal how "consistent' you are with following or breaking your rules.
The possibilities are endless.
All that is left is for you to create templates and start adding plans to your trades/trading days!
April 10th, 2023 Update:
You can now analyze all your plans and checklists! Check here for more info: https://tradesviz.com/blog/trading-plan-analysis/
Want to learn more about creating effective plans?
Read: https://www.tradesviz.com/blog/trading-plan-examples/
Any questions? Do you have requests for modifications or changes to the plan system? Let us know at [email protected]!