Storing Useful Trading Ideas & Information

[gav]

I was wondering how people store useful trading ideas and information.

About 6 months ago, I started collating ideas and information into a Word document if it helped me understand something, could be applied to my trading, or if I thought it would be useful to me in the future. It could be a post on a forum, an article, a website, a certain page or chapter in a book, or a book I might like to read in the future, etc.

I would copy the link into the Word document (or page/reference if it is a book), and write a brief once sentence description beside the link or reference for when I refer to it in the future. I have heaps of useful information now, and I regret not doing this when I first began to research trading. However over the past 6 months, this Word document has now become a few pages long and is starting to resemble a dogs breakfast.

I'm thinking of creating several word documents for different trading topics - that way when I want to go over a particular topic, I simply refer to that topic's Word document.

I'm sure there are many of you who save useful ideas and information too. What methods do you use to organise or store useful information?

[professor_frink]

I was wondering how people store useful trading ideas and information.

About 6 months ago, I started collating ideas and information into a Word document if it helped me understand something, could be applied to my trading, or if I thought it would be useful to me in the future. It could be a post on a forum, an article, a website, a certain page or chapter in a book, or a book I might like to read in the future, etc.

I would copy the link into the Word document (or page/reference if it is a book), and write a brief once sentence description beside the link or reference for when I refer to it in the future. I have heaps of useful information now, and I regret not doing this when I first began to research trading. However over the past 6 months, this Word document has now become a few pages long and is starting to resemble a dogs breakfast.

I'm thinking of creating several word documents for different trading topics - that way when I want to go over a particular topic, I simply refer to that topic's Word document.

I'm sure there are many of you who save useful ideas and information too. What methods do you use to organise or store useful information?

I use OneNote for all of that sort of stuff. Absolutely freaking brilliant bit of gear and can't recommend it enough

[nomore4s]

I use OneNote for all of that sort of stuff. Absolutely freaking brilliant bit of gear and can't recommend it enough

I also use OneNote. It is awesome.

[Sam Collins]

I'm using EfficientDiary. I just have it open during each trading session record everything as I go, its basically the same as Word as far as looks and typing features, can add attachments or whatever you want. It does the job anyway, I start a new one each day, like an actual diary. I like it

Oh, and its frrreeeeeeeeeeee

[Trembling Hand]

Vote 1 for old school......... pen & paper..

[gav]

TH, I didn't know you had upgraded from stone and chisel

I just downloaded OneNote. I've only had a quick play around, but this looks to be exactly what I'm after. Thanks guys.

[awg]

Vote 1 for old school......... pen & paper..

Something about the process of writing it down seems to clarify & crystallise the thought process..does in me anyway

got accurately-labelled folders of stuff on various topics on my laptop

[lakemac]

You might also like to try Freemind which is a mindmapper package.

It has a free form heirachical tree structure.
I use it to store past trades including chart snapshots.

One thing I wish I had was a system that I could cross reference (or cross thread for a better analogy of what I want) based on different (user selectable) criteria.

In other words some days I might want to look at my trades in a time ordered way, but then I might want to look at them by stock code.

Or others it might just be a group I have selected by just clicking on a sequence of charts and/or notes.

I am intrigued by this OneNote product. Thanks for the info guys on that. Will have to download a trial to check it out.

[Sam Collins]

Anyone know of anything that includes the time automatically on each entry you make? I usually do a running commentary style thing while I trade and I want it to add the time of each entry during the day, so I can easily see how long it was between key moments.

Thought maybe there might be some excel code for it at least?

[lakemac]

Hi Sam,

Freemind has an option to display creation and modification times as a popup when you hover over each node.

[professor_frink]

Anyone know of anything that includes the time automatically on each entry you make? I usually do a running commentary style thing while I trade and I want it to add the time of each entry during the day, so I can easily see how long it was between key moments.

Thought maybe there might be some excel code for it at least?

OneNote can't do that automatically(that I know of anyway), but if you hit ALT-SHIFT-F before each time you type, it'll throw a timestamp in there, which will basically do what you are looking for

[Sam Collins]

Hi Sam,

Freemind has an option to display creation and modification times as a popup when you hover over each node.

OneNote can't do that automatically(that I know of anyway), but if you hit ALT-SHIFT-F before each time you type, it'll throw a timestamp in there, which will basically do what you are looking for

Thanks guys, will check them both out

[nomore4s]

Anyone know of anything that includes the time automatically on each entry you make? I usually do a running commentary style thing while I trade and I want it to add the time of each entry during the day, so I can easily see how long it was between key moments.

Thought maybe there might be some excel code for it at least?

One Note does this, for each new page/sub page you start.

[Sam Collins]

One Note does this, for each new page/sub page you start.

Yeah, I'm looking for something that does it each time I type something new, otherwise I'll have 553 thousand pages all with 1 sentence on each just to get the time to print

The professors idea seems to be the go for now, until I find something that does it automatically.

[lakemac]

I know where you are coming from Sam. Had exactly this kind of auto timestamp need myself.

So far Freemind is the only thing I have found that supports a node by node auto timestamp (created and last modified).

That being said I did manage to download a trial version of office 10 and load it into a virtual PC (so I didn't damage my existing setup) and try out OneNote. Interesting product.

To summarise it, it is as others have described like a three ring binder.
The analogy is quite close which also means it does have serious limitations for the way I store information imho (in my humble opinion).

It allows you to have multiple folders (binders) which are indexed down the left side of the screen. Within each binder you can have sections (much like the tabs you find in a normal 3 ring binder) - they are tabbed across the top. Then you have have multiple pages in each tabbed section. Page tabs are down the right hand side. From what I found, you can have another two levels of sub-pages below the page level, giving a total of binder - section - page - subpage level 1 - subpage level 2 = 5 levels of information depth.

Why consider information depth? It comes down to how you organise your information. Lets say you have a trading diary for each year - that is your binder level eg. "trading diary 2010". Then we might decide to have a section for each stock we trade eg. "RIO" "ANZ" "STO" and so on. Individual pages might be one per day so we have page 1 as "0705 Mon" depending upon your sorting techniques. But this is where I find all existing tools fall down (including Freemind which I am an avid fan of btw).

I traded both RIO and ANZ on Monday 5th July. How do I collate them into a time ordered sequence for that day. Can you see the problem? It is an issue of wanting different ways of collating the information. Individual notes about a trade can be collated by stock code, by date/time sequence, by direction (short/long), by news item (eg. RBA interest rate decision). The list goes on.

So far I haven't found a solution to this (short of writing my own system which I have done some very very preliminary test code for).

Freemind has the same problem. You can't collate individual pieces of information via different paths. Both OneNote and Freemind allow for cross referencing links between pages but they both only get you to a page - not an individual item.

Also had a look at several wiki's as well (http://www.wikimatrix.org/) but still not happy Jan.

[Sam Collins]

I know where you are coming from Sam. Had exactly this kind of auto timestamp need myself.

So far Freemind is the only thing I have found that supports a node by node auto timestamp (created and last modified).

That being said I did manage to download a trial version of office 10 and load it into a virtual PC (so I didn't damage my existing setup) and try out OneNote. Interesting product.

To summarise it, it is as others have described like a three ring binder.
The analogy is quite close which also means it does have serious limitations for the way I store information imho (in my humble opinion).

It allows you to have multiple folders (binders) which are indexed down the left side of the screen. Within each binder you can have sections (much like the tabs you find in a normal 3 ring binder) - they are tabbed across the top. Then you have have multiple pages in each tabbed section. Page tabs are down the right hand side. From what I found, you can have another two levels of sub-pages below the page level, giving a total of binder - section - page - subpage level 1 - subpage level 2 = 5 levels of information depth.

Why consider information depth? It comes down to how you organise your information. Lets say you have a trading diary for each year - that is your binder level eg. "trading diary 2010". Then we might decide to have a section for each stock we trade eg. "RIO" "ANZ" "STO" and so on. Individual pages might be one per day so we have page 1 as "0705 Mon" depending upon your sorting techniques. But this is where I find all existing tools fall down (including Freemind which I am an avid fan of btw).

I traded both RIO and ANZ on Monday 5th July. How do I collate them into a time ordered sequence for that day. Can you see the problem? It is an issue of wanting different ways of collating the information. Individual notes about a trade can be collated by stock code, by date/time sequence, by direction (short/long), by news item (eg. RBA interest rate decision). The list goes on.

So far I haven't found a solution to this (short of writing my own system which I have done some very very preliminary test code for).

Freemind has the same problem. You can't collate individual pieces of information via different paths. Both OneNote and Freemind allow for cross referencing links between pages but they both only get you to a page - not an individual item.

Also had a look at several wiki's as well (http://www.wikimatrix.org/) but still not happy Jan.

Yeah, I have found that what professor_frink said to do is the best option at this stage, for me anyway, I have done it like so, just pushing Alt+shift+F before I type something new, easiest option and closest to what I want so far anyway *I have whited out what I have written, I don't just put time stamps everywhere

[artist]

Is a product like Microsoft's Access or Open Office's Base relevant here? I thought they were created for just this situation where cross-referencing, linking and manipulation of fields (slicing and dicing), and database interrogation is needed. Perhaps, as lakemap said "It comes down to how you organise your information".

I Googled 'how can you timestamp an entry in microsoft office access' which lead me to the Microsoft page - "Add a date or time stamp to new records" - where it states that "You can use the Now or Date functions to have Access automatically fill in the date or time when a new record is added. Use the Now function to fill in the date and time, or the Date function to fill in just the date." This is followed by the list of necessary steps (1 through to 9) to enable this function, and then the article ends with "Each time you add a new record to the table, Access automatically inserts the date or the date and time in the Date Added field."

Then I Googled 'how can you timestamp an entry in open office base' and got links to forum pages where people offered solutions they had worked out.

Finally I tried 'how can you timestamp an entry in microsoft onenote' and read several suggestions in addition to the Alt+Shift+F option.

[lakemac]

Hi artist,

Yes I had thought that a database was the obvious answer but the problem with most databases available is they are based on a relational model (ah the joys of CJ Date's book on database normalisation - but I digress into a past life). By that I mean relational databases such as Access, store things in tables which at first blush appears to make sense.

However, most information I find I store does not fit into "rows and columns" of a database table. I need to store "blobs" to use the Oracle parlance. Basically I am storing bits of data (screen shots, text, tablular data in some instances (think watch lists), timestamps and attributes associated with eacho of those) and most importantly the links and cross links between those bits of data. Most of those don't neatly fit the relational model.

Which then begs the question what alternatives are available. Wiki is one thought - they can be a bit too rigid, but do have the ability to support underlying timestamping, page revision, links etc (been looking at FosWiki the spinoff from TWiki). Wiki's normally hide the database details underneath the web interface which helps but you still need to be a pseudo programmer to be able to configure the Wiki to handle the information you want to store.

I also had a look at Cache which is a commercial (free for single user) object database. It can store pretty much anything in its b-tree like structure and has a nice language on top of it. However once again I don't want to build an entire GUI and programming interface to do this (although at the rate things are going I might just have to).

Having now thrown OneNote out as being unable to handle deep chunking (ie. folding information down past 3 or 4 levels) and its lack of good cross referencing, I am evaluating FosWiki as the next alternative (if I can get past its oppressive security features - good for some but I don't need that right now).

[lakemac]

Tell you guys what my ideal notetaker looks like (this is what I would one day like to finish building).

Firstly some ground rules:
1. The amount of screen space taken up by menus, and screen candy should be at an absolute minimum. I want max space for my notes.
2. It should be intuitive to use with full reprogrammability of what keys and mouse gestures are associated with user selected functionality. If you are like me my fingers think in "vi" the Unix editor. I reprogrammed Freemind keystrokes so I can move around the tree by using "vi" movement commands .
3. Funamental data should be stored in a form that is basically human readable or viewable in standard formats. All too many times data gets lost in databases that crash. I am a firm beleiver in having images, text and such like stored in a standard filesystem with only the linkages in the actual database core. If the database is lost, I don't want to have to start an archeological dig to extract my information from a pile of disorganised bits (and don't get me started on ASCII dumps of a database...)
4. We live in the fourth dimension - that means everything should be timestamped as it happens. Similarly massive disk storage is so rediculously cheap that the concept of overwriting (ie. updating an existing record in a database) should be permanently banned. My aim is to be able to walk forwards or backwards in time and observe what I was doing at that time (my current trading platform Spark Trader www.iguana2.com/spark supports this kind of feature with market replays - awesome for doing what if training). Thus everything I do, changes, additions, deletions are able to be reversed as nothing ever gets deleted, just new links are formed and new data is being stored.

So next is my ideal interface.

[lakemac]

Part 2 - the ideal interface for note taking.

Having studied human interface engineering I have come to the conclusion that the humble white (or black) board is an exceptional tool for communicating ideas.

If you watch someone on a whiteboard they are able to draw 4 basic items:
1. a square or rectangle
2. a cirlce
3. a line (curved or reasonably straight)
4. simple text

Sometimes people use magnets to stick pictures up on the whiteboard.

Whiteboards suffer one big drawback - you can't zoom them in or out.

Chunking or folding or zoom out or the ability to group related pieces of information together into an enclosing concept is paramount to most human activities. So much so it probably should be one of the ground rules. We use the concept all the time - single pages on RIO into the RIO folder; RIO folder into the share holding draw (sorted in alphabetical order maybe); top draw for shares, bottom draw for derivatives. Or using the car as an example - you don't have to know how the details of how an engine works in order to press the accelerator in order to go faster. The concept of the engine is chunked down to engine, fuel, accelerator, drive shaft.

If we go back to the whiteboard - it doesn't easily support chunking. Computers make that easy. Mind maps are the master of folding (another term for chunking) large amounts of information into a small number of managable bite sized chunks. Human typically can only deal with about 7 chunks at a time before we overload. Watch a person on a whiteboard and typically they will only have about 7 - 10 concepts on any particular drawing (Powerpoint reduces this to about 5 useful concepts).

So lets have the interface look like a zoomable whiteboard. As we zoom in the information unfolds or unchunks if you like to reveal more detail. Zoom out and the information chunks up again simplifying what we can see.

Personally I think the rotating wheel on most mice is highly under utilised as a zoom in/out control.

On my ideal interface placing the mouse over an area and rotating the mouse wheel (or whatever other control you might choose) zooms in (or out) that particular area. Effectively acting like a localised magnifying glass, folding or unfolding more or less detail.

So how do I group things?
Lets go back to the whiteboard. Rectangles or circles.
On my ideal interface a rectangle or circle is drawn by a simple mouse (or other user defined action) gesture. Click and drag diagonal gives you a rectangle. Click and drag around gives you a circle. Click and drag a straight line gives you exactly that (diagonal lines are a special case).

Text can be entered anywhere on the note taking surface as it automatically groups itself.

Images are copy and paste. I have been playing around with using transparency control to allow the pull thru of screen shots from underlying (or overlaying) programs onto the note taking surface.

Of course as each item is added it gets timestamped.

Want to link two or more bits of info together - either draw a rectangle around them or draw a "string" thru them. So for example I might have a list of trades I am about to execute. They are nothing more than a list of text items on the note taking space. Draw a box around them and they are all grouped into a trading idea. Snapshot some charts, drag them onto the note taking space, arrange them to your liking then link each one to their respective trade. More than one chart influenced your trade (eg, oil price chart, XMJ and WPL moved) just add a bit of "string" between each image and link it back to the trade.

Finished with that zoom it out to chunk or "fold" it.
Want to look at trades you did that involved WPL, either type the text WPL somewhere or click on an item that contains WPL and start auto reference to others. Hey presto another linkage diagram automatically is available as a chunked item below where your mouse is. Want to see it, just zoom in.

This is just a small part of the interface (I already have the preliminary design notes for the rest of it).

Next step is providing underlying programmable behaviours.