Business Notes

What Are Business Notes?

Business Notes is a freeform text section within your trading plan for recording key decisions, observations, and lessons about your trading business.

It's not a trade journal — TradingPlan doesn't log individual trades. Business Notes operates at a higher level: it's where you record things that shape how you trade, not the details of what you traded.

What to Use It For

Think of it as your running decision log. Examples of the kind of entries that belong here:

Strategic decisions:

Plan updates:

Performance observations:

Mindset breakthroughs:

Market observations:

How It's Different From the Mindset Section

The Mindset section is about your internal psychological state — beliefs, emotional patterns, self-awareness.

Business Notes is about external decisions and observations — changes to your approach, market insights, rule updates, and anything else that represents a deliberate business-level choice.

Tips for Using Business Notes Well

Write after sessions, not during. The best notes come from reflection after the market has closed, not in the heat of the moment.

Be specific. "Had a bad week" is useless in six months. "Hit daily drawdown limit three days in a row, all triggered by forcing setups in low-volatility conditions" is actionable.

Date your entries. Including a date makes it much easier to review your evolution over time and connect notes to specific market periods.

Use it as a changelog. When you update your strategy rules or risk settings, note why in Business Notes. Future you will thank present you.

Reviewing Your Notes

Periodically reading back through your Business Notes is one of the most underrated activities in trading. It shows you how much you've learned, which problems keep recurring, and whether the decisions you made held up over time.

A monthly or quarterly review of your Business Notes — alongside a review of your overall plan — is a simple habit with a high return.