QUESTION: Investor psychology: how to keep an investor's diary and why is it needed?

Keeping an investor's diary is one of the most underestimated tools for self-analysis and psychological stabilization in the stock market. This document allows you to record not only numbers and trades, but also your emotional state at the time of buying or selling an asset. Thanks to regular entries, you can track your own cognitive distortions, such as overconfidence after a successful trade or panic fear during a correction.

When it comes to investor psychology and keeping records, it is important to maintain balance and avoid extremes: do not overestimate expectations for your returns in the first months of trading, leave enough room for a full life outside the market, and be sure to record progress with small control points. Write down the reason for purchasing each stock or bond, your expectations for timelines, and the target price.

The practical value of the diary is revealed a few months or years later when you return to old entries. You can clearly see how fear forced you to sell great assets at the bottom or how greed pushed you into questionable speculative stories. Analyzing your own mistakes in writing strikes a blow to illusions and helps you act more rationally and coolly the next time.

Creating such a habit takes minimal time, but brings huge benefits. It is enough to spend ten minutes after each trade describing your decision and feelings to notice a qualitative improvement in your investment behavior and the growth of total capital in a year by eliminating stupid emotional mistakes.