Okay, so this week I wanted to keep better track of my trades, and I thought a visual chart would be a cool way to do it. I’ve been kinda winging it, you know, just making trades based on gut feeling, and that’s not really a solid strategy. I figured if I could see my trading value over time, it might help me spot patterns, or at least show me if I’m actually making any progress!
Getting Started
First, I needed to figure out what I even wanted to track. I decided to keep it simple for now: date, item traded in, item traded out, and estimated value of each. I just used a plain old spreadsheet to start. Google Sheets, to be precise – it’s free and easy.
The Messy Middle
- Gathering Data: This was the boring part. I had to go back through my trade history and try to remember what I’d traded and when. It was a bit of a mess, honestly. Some stuff I’d forgotten about completely!
- Estimating Values: Okay, this was tricky. Some items have pretty clear prices, but others are all over the place. I mostly used recent sales on a few trading sites as a guide, but it’s definitely not perfect. I just tried to be consistent.
- Building Chart: Input all information that I collected and sort them by date. Then selected all data to insert a “line chart”.
- Adjusting the Chart: Then I also played around with the chart settings – colors, labels, that sort of thing – just to make it easier to read.
The (Slightly) Pretty Result
After a few hours of messing around, I had a chart! It’s not super fancy, but it does show me how my trade value has changed over the week. And you know what? It actually went up! It’s not a huge jump, but it’s something. Seeing that upward trend, even a little one, is pretty motivating.
It also highlighted a couple of bad trades where I clearly lost value. Seeing those dips on the chart made me think more carefully about why I made those trades, and what I could have done differently.
Overall, I’m glad I did this. It took a bit of effort, but it’s given me a much clearer picture of my trading activity. I’m definitely going to keep this up next week, and maybe even add a few more data points to track. I’m thinking of adding a “notes” column to jot down my reasoning for each trade. Maybe that will help me learn even faster!
