What is the minimum I need to record for a gold trade?

Session in UTC, setup tag, spread at entry, intended versus executed stop in dollars per ounce, macro tag, exit reason and a violation flag. Everything else — entry, exit, lot size, timestamp — should come from your platform automatically.

Should I use local time or UTC for session tagging?

UTC only. Local time shifts with daylight saving twice a year and will silently corrupt session comparisons in a journal that has been running for more than six months.

What does a violation flag actually catch that a P&L number does not?

It separates a valid setup that lost from a rule that was broken. Without it, a losing streak of broken rules looks identical to a losing streak of correctly executed trades, and you will diagnose the wrong problem.

Do I need to screenshot every trade?

Yes, at minimum an entry screenshot with the level, entry and stop marked, and an exit screenshot with a one-line reason. Consistency of framing across screenshots matters more than the volume of them.

Is MT5 sync enough on its own?

No. Sync supplies execution data — price, size, time, swap, commission — but not the setup tag, macro tag, violation flag or exit reason, which are the fields that actually diagnose anything. Add those manually within minutes of the trade closing.

How often should I review the journal?

Weekly for violations, monthly for session and setup expectancy, quarterly for whether a previously working setup has decayed. Reviewing only in aggregate hides decay behind a healthy lifetime average.

TRACKING GOLD TRADES

Tracking XAUUSD trades usefully requires a minimum field set beyond standard execution data: UTC session, setup tag, spread at entry, intended versus executed stop in dollars per ounce, macro tag, exit reason and a violation flag distinguishing valid setups from broken rules.

Session attribution must use UTC rather than local time to avoid daylight-saving drift, with Asian, London, New York overlap and rollover windows tagged separately because gold spread and liquidity behaviour differs sharply between them.

MetaTrader 5 sync should supply all execution data automatically, while the judgement fields — setup, macro tag, violation flag and exit reason — remain manual and are best recorded within minutes of the trade closing to avoid retroactive editing of memory.