Field note · 12 March 2026
A session note that still holds a week later
A note that can be reviewed names the session, the bar, and what was seen before the outcome. It leaves a blank where you did not know yet.
Most journals that arrive at Gyeryong-ro fail in the same place. The page is full, the handwriting is careful, and none of it can be placed back on the chart. The sitting then spends the first half hour finding a clock time. This note is about writing the page so that half hour is not required.
Date the session before you explain it
Put four things on the first line: the calendar date, the market, the bar size, and the session you mean. "Kospi 200, daily, 4 March, the bar that closed the range" is enough. "Today the market felt heavy" is not, because a week later nobody can find that bar.
If you trade more than one session in a day, number them. Opening hour and the hour after the US cash open are different pages, even when they share a date. The review reads in written order. Mixed sessions on one page force the reader to guess which high you meant.
Write what you saw, then stop
The sentence that holds is the one you could have said while the bar was still forming. A higher low against the prior swing. A poke above yesterday's high. A close back inside a range that had already lasted eleven sessions. Those are observations. They can be checked.
The sentence that collapses is the one written after you know the result. "I knew it would reject" cannot be checked, because the page does not show when the knowing arrived. If you want the later thought kept, put it under a line and label it later. The review will read it as later. That is useful. Smuggling it upward is what makes the journal impossible to trust.
Leave a blank on purpose
Every solid page we see has a blank line under the observation, with the words "not known yet" or simply an empty space. The blank is the part students try to fill in on the train home. Leave it. When the journal is reviewed, that space shows you did not invent a reason to cover the wait.
Under the blank, after the session, you may add what the bar did. Keep it short: close back inside, range held, swing low broke. Do not add a new cause. The cause, if you still want it, belongs in the next session's plan, where it can be tested while it is still a plan.
One mark, named in words
If you marked a level, name it in the note the same way you would name it aloud at the desk. "Prior day high" is a name. "The obvious level" is not. The chart annotation and the journal have to use the same nouns, or the sitting becomes a translation exercise.
A page written this way is dull to reread at night. It is quick to review on a Tuesday. That is the trade the room will always take.