Why tags beat free-text notes
Most journals let you write "took profits too early" or "chased the entry." That's a note. After 500 trades you have no way to know how often you took profits early or how much it actually cost you. Notes don't aggregate.
A tag does. chased_entry becomes a data point. The journal can tell you that across Q1 you took 23 chased entries with a 34% win rate and they cost the account $1,840.
Categories & tags
Tags live inside categories that keep your taxonomy organized. A starting taxonomy might look like this:
perfect_entry, chased_entry, late_entry, early_exit, held_to_target
trending, choppy, low_volume, news_event
confident, revenge_trade, fomo, patient
moved_stop, oversized, no_setup, broke_rules
How they work in the analytics
Once you've tagged enough trades, the tag analysis view answers questions like:
— Which behaviors correlate with winners?
— How much P&L does each pattern actually cost or earn me?
— Are my mistakes getting more or less expensive over time?
A tag used on five trades is anecdote. A tag used on 50+ becomes statistically interesting. That's where the real change happens — when "I think I chase entries sometimes" becomes "chased entries cost me $1,840 last quarter."
Tag positives, too. The point isn't to police yourself. Tags like perfect_execution and held_to_target tell you what you're doing right so you can do more of it.
One last thing on cadence
Tag the same day, while everything is still fresh. Trying to remember what happened three weeks ago defeats the purpose. The calendar day view is set up so a tag pass on five to fifteen trades takes a few minutes.