Rebel Traders™ Podcast - Stock Market Trading Strategies, Insights & Analysis with Sean Donahoe & Phil Newton · Trade Canyon, Inc. - Smarter Traders Live Here®

RT287 - The Trader's Journal: Essential Habits for Long-term Success

·49 min·3 clips

A 50-period moving average turns “it looks like” into “it is going down.”

1. Rebel Traders™ Podcast RT287 focuses on journaling and review as part of long-term trading success. 2. Sean Donahoe and Phil Newton host the show, and both speak as active traders with years of market experience. 3. The episode asks what traders should record, review, and change so trading decisions become measurable. 4. Sean says he first resisted journaling and thought it was a “waste of fucking time.” 5. Phil describes a 2001 journal from his prop-shop days, including red-flag notes on CPI and PPI. 6. Sean explains that his records now include trade logs, software analysis, and market context. 7. Phil recalls drawing hand-sketched patterns and writing market synopses before adding emotional reactions. 8. Sean and Phil compare a recent choppy SPX market with normal conditions and note an 80% win-rate strategy falling below 50%. 9. Phil says his own trade decisions were shaped by a weekly filter that kept him from compounding into a loser. 10. Sean gives a live example of a morning breakout that barely qualified and then failed. 11. Sean says the journal data showed those marginal breakouts had gone the other way 100% of the time. 12. Phil describes using that sample to add a five-percent rule to the starting block range. 13. Sean says journaling helped him separate a correct trade from a trade that only produced a monetary loss. 14. Phil says a losing trade can still be a winning trade if the strategy was applied correctly. 15. Sean describes a young trader on gold who stopped saying “it looks like” and started making statements about trend and range. 16. Phil says a 50-period moving average helped that trader define whether price was going up, down, or sideways. 17. The episode is conversational, repetitive in a deliberate way, and built around examples rather than a formal lesson plan. 18. Sean and Phil use direct, informal language, challenge each other, and keep returning to practical trade review. 19. Traders who want a journaling framework for real market decisions. 20. Traders seeking entertainment, theory, or polished formality.

As heard by us

Journaling is treated as a practical trading habit that helps separate bad trades from bad process.

Journaling and review come across as a working habit for traders, not a tidy lecture. Sean Donahoe and Phil Newton stay on what to do, what to avoid, and how to tell a bad trade from a bad process.

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Want a blunt reset on your trading habits?

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