Keeping a skin trading journal: records and results

What to record

Minimum set: purchase date, full name of the item with condition, purchase price, purchase site, sale date, sale price, sales site.

Be sure to add two fields that are usually forgotten. The first is the amount actually received after the commission, and not the price of the lot. The second is the number of days the item has been lying around.

Helpful, but not required: Reason for purchase in one line. In a month you won’t remember why you took this skin, and that’s exactly what needs to be taken apart.

Fix the currency separately if you work both in Steam and for rubles. Mixing them in one column is a guaranteed way to get a meaningless result.

Four useful metrics

Net profit. The sum of all money received minus the sum of all money spent. It is calculated based on actual deposits, not price tags.

Average retention period. How many days on average does money stay in an item? A profit of 10% in a week and 10% in six months are fundamentally different results, and without this figure they cannot be distinguished.

Share of losing trades. It's normal when it is there. It's not normal when you don't know her.

Frozen amount. How much money is sitting in unsold items right now. If this figure grows from month to month, you are not trading, but accumulating illiquid assets.

Reviewing your trading journal

Look at the grand total, not the individual lines. One large successful trade easily masks a dozen small unprofitable ones.

Compare the plan with the fact. If you bought an item with the expectation of selling it in two weeks, but it sits for two months, this is an error in assessing liquidity, and it will repeat itself until you name it.

Look for patterns in losses. Usually they are of the same type: buying on growth, incorrect assessment of liquidity, underestimated commission. Three or four entries with the same reason is already a system that can be corrected.

And separately: a profitable deal does not mean a correct one. You could buy at random and guess. Evaluate the decision based on the data you had at the time of purchase, and not on the result.

Three accounting mistakes

Count from the price of the lot, and not from the amount received. A 13% commission on a sale turns a paper plus into a real minus.

Mix the balance of Steam with rubles. These are different currencies with different purchasing powers, and you cannot add them together.

Ignore unsold items. The result, calculated only on closed transactions, always looks better than the real one: everything unsuccessful continues to hang in the inventory and is not included in the calculation.