Journaling during a prop firm evaluation

The short answer

A journal is how you find out whether a failed evaluation was variance or a broken method. Record the account state alongside the trade — distance to the drawdown, the day count, and how much of the daily limit was already used — because inside an evaluation those numbers are part of the decision, and without them the entry cannot be judged later.

In short

·Log the account state, not just the trade. Buffer and rule proximity are what you will need later.

·Record plan adherence as a yes/no field — it is the most diagnostic column you will have.

·Note the reason for size, not just the size.

·Review weekly against the rules, not daily against the P&L.

Why a normal trading journal is not enough

A standard journal records entry, exit, setup and result. That tells you about your strategy. It does not tell you why an account closed, because accounts close on rule proximity rather than on trade quality.

On a funded account you need a second layer: what state was the account in, and how close were you to a limit.

The fields worth logging

Per trade:

Buffer at entry — the distance to the nearest breach level.
Risk as a percentage of that buffer, not of the balance.
Reason for the size — "plan" or, honestly, "felt confident" / "making back the morning".
Plan adherence — a simple yes/no on whether the trade was inside your written plan.

Per day:

Closing equity, and the day's loss as a share of the daily limit.
Whether you hit your own daily stop and whether you then stopped.
Trading day count so far against the minimum.
Under a trailing rule, the equity high — because that is what set your breach level.

The most diagnostic column

Plan adherence. After a failed evaluation, sort by that column and compare the results of the "yes" trades against the "no" trades. If the "yes" trades were profitable and the "no" trades were not, you have a discipline problem with a known fix. If the "yes" trades lost money too, you have a strategy problem, and another evaluation will not help.

That single split answers the question the post-mortem is trying to answer, and it is only available if you logged it at the time.

Record the near misses

Days where you came within a fraction of the daily limit and recovered feel like nothing happened. They are the most informative days you have, because they show your sizing was one bad sequence away from ending the account.

Count them. Three near misses in a month is a sizing problem announcing itself before it costs you.

Review weekly, against the rules

Daily review of P&L encourages reacting to noise. Weekly review against the plan's clauses — did I size from the buffer, did I stop when I said I would, was I flat before the reset — is short, unemotional and actionable.

Keep it after you pass

The funded account is where the journal earns its keep, because the rules that bite there are the soft ones checked at payout. A log showing your best day as a share of total profit, and your trade timestamps against the news calendar, is exactly what a payout review is going to ask about.

Now compare the rules yourself

Every firm we document, with each rule in this article as a filterable field.

Open comparison