Keeping Track of Things:

Tax time is a great time to go back and look at what you did in the prior year.  What worked?  What didn't? There are trades you remember, and there are others that you try to forget.  The taxman forces you to remember them all.

This blog (if you can call it that) is really a way for me to keep track of my thoughts in a somewhat organized manner.  I grab a TON of charts throughout the year, and I mainly just save them all to Dropbox. All file names include the ticker so that if I ever want to go back and look for a given stock, I can immediately call up any chart I've ever grabbed of that ticker.

When I'm feeling extra motivated or if I find a chart particularly useful/important, I print them out and put them in *the book*. The book I've referenced before is a physical book that has my notes in it.  If my computer dies, the book will survive. (granted, if my house burns down, the book will be gone) but I feel like it really focuses your energy as a way to say -- Is this trade worth printing out and putting in the book? Would I be proud of this trade to go back and look at?  If the answer is no, sometimes it helps you avoid trades that you subconsciously know aren't really what you want to memorialize.

So I save my work in multiple forms.  The computer when I just grab charts to sift through later, the physical book, the master spreadsheet that has all sorts of goodies/calculators/planning info, and the blogs/forums/stocktwits places to bounce ideas off others or to just give other people ideas to use.

The combination is hopefully a level of rigor that forces you to keep your eye on the ball and to make adjustments as needed. It also allows you to see what works and what doesn't.