Let’s start with the obvious one of course. You should record your trading sessions so when you do turn that $50 into a million you can post that baby up on YouTube and become world famous!
Alright, maybe that is a little far fetched. Really though, why should you consider starting to record all of your trading sessions? Well, there’s a few reasons and the first reason is evidence. Although you may not think much of it now, often times glitches, spreads, wrong expiries, lagged entries come into play when we are trading. Luckily for us, some of the brokers after seeing the video evidence will fix the issue and/or refund your money on a trade plus the profit you should have earned. As you can see, this can be a fantastic tool if you had placed a large sum of money and an issue like one stated above happens.
Next up, a great reason to record your trades is for review purposes. Personally, I can’t count the number of times I wish I could have gone back and reviewed a trade that I took that won or lost for one reason or another. Or check out what happened if I actually hit the wrong button, typed in the wrong amount, forgot to switch assets, etc. The possibilities of its uses are seemingly endless, and I think you will find that having something to go back and review, especially something that happened live can be extremely beneficial.
Finally, let’s discuss a few places you can go to get the software. One of the nice free places I’ve found is called Screenr. It can be found at http://www.screenr.com. It’s a nice recorder and best of all it’s java based, so you shouldn’t have any software to download. The other piece of software you may want to check out is called Camstudio, which can be found at http://www.camstudio.org and is a downloadable software and also free.
Lastly we have the two big boys. Camtasia, which is what I have been using as its quality seems unbeatable compared to all I that have seen and Screenflow for OSX (Mac). However these come at a hefty price tag of $299 per license for Camtasia and $99 for Screenflow. If you are interested in either one of these, you can buy it at http://www.camtasia.com and http://www.telestream.net/screenflow/overview.htm.
So, If I were you I would certainly give the free ones a try and let everyone know of your experiences with them in the comments below.
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We use Screenflow. Best OSX tool in our opinion. We ALWAYS recommend recording your trades. With screenflow it’s easy, simply “pause” the recording between your trades. No need to record all the fluff between
I was really thinking about doing this for a while but never really knew if it would be worth it. But after reading this it def helps me think about it a little differently.
I do agree that video evidence is the best evidence that you can have when dealing with issues such as slippage.
I’m def considering doing this.
Can you please post any video you record with the free software? I want to see the quality of video whether it is acceptable or not. Thanks,
I’ve just started so I’ll definitely do this.
I’ve been logging my trades recently as well. I tried CamStudio but had no luck.
There’s a free screen capture program called ‘Screen Capturer’. Works really well.
Be honest, you guys delete the videos when you get hammered on a trade, don’t you? I know I do…
for me just screenshots of my trades are enough. I like to look back at my wins/loses and try to improve my skills.
@joe0074
This link provides a look at how to use the camtasia to record. It is recorded by Camtasia itself!
Hoe this helps!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vUvCs_b0sM