Currency Trading Journal India: Keep the Contract Clear

A currency trading journal in India should record the exact pair, contract, quantity units, entry and exit, costs and reason for the position. Keep the broker and venue visible so a rupee-quoted contract is not confused with an offshore forex product. OneTradeJournal records trades manually; its availability does not establish your eligibility to trade a particular instrument.

Check the permitted route separately

The RBI forex FAQ, updated 28 August 2024 and checked here on 15 October 2026, says resident persons are permitted to transact only with authorised persons and for permitted purposes. It says permitted electronic forex transactions should use only RBI-authorised electronic trading platforms or recognised stock exchanges under applicable terms.

The same FAQ identifies hedging exchange-rate risk as the permitted purpose for foreign-currency/INR derivatives. Review the current requirements with your authorised provider before trading. This journal guide does not confirm any contract’s present availability or your compliance with those requirements.

Is forex trading legal in India, and what can you log?

The RBI forex FAQ quoted above says electronic forex transactions should use only RBI-authorised electronic trading platforms or recognised stock exchanges. In practice, retail traders who trade currency in India use currency futures and options on recognised exchanges such as NSE, through a registered broker. Those are rupee-settled contracts.

Many offshore forex apps and websites advertise leveraged trading in pairs such as EURUSD. They are not the same as the exchange contracts. Do not log trades from an offshore platform as if they were an Indian exchange trade, and check the position with your broker and a qualified adviser before you trade. This guide is not legal advice.

Currency pairs, lot units and market hours

NSE says it offers cash-settled futures and options on four INR pairs (USD-INR, EUR-INR, GBP-INR and JPY-INR) and three cross-currency pairs (EUR-USD, GBP-USD and USD-JPY). The numbers below come from exchange specification sheets quoted in search results, because NSE's own pages did not open for us on 28 Oct 2026. Check the live contract on your broker before you rely on them.

The tick size (smallest price step) quoted for the INR pairs is 0.25 paise, which is Rs 0.0025. For USDINR that makes one tick worth Rs 2.50 per lot (1,000 x 0.0025). The same specification sheets give trading hours of Monday to Friday, 9:00 am to 5:00 pm for the INR pairs. Cross-pair hours and ticks have been quoted differently by different exchanges, so confirm them on the exchange notice for the contract you trade. Our guide on cross-currency pairs covers that group, and currency futures explained covers the basics.

Record the units before the result

• Pair and quotation: identify the currencies and what the quoted price means. Do not treat every currency pair’s displayed movement as the same money amount.
• Contract identity: venue, instrument type and expiry. For options, include strike, call or put, and whether you bought or sold.
• Position size: record contracts and the underlying units represented by each. Keep the multiplier used for the calculation.
• Execution record: date, time with time zone, prices and each completed quantity. Retain a separate note for an open balance.
• Decision context: entry reason, intended risk, stop and target where used, and the reason for any change.
• Costs and settlement: state the currency of the result, what costs are included and whether any amount is still estimated.

The broader forex journal guide explains how pair quotation affects interpretation. For a contract-based record, the futures guide helps keep price movement separate from the position multiplier.

What a currency trading journal should include

• Date and time with time zone, as currency prices react to events overseas.
• Pair, contract month and whether it is a future or an option (with strike and call or put).
• Side, number of lots and the units behind them, for example 3 lots x 1,000 dollars.
• Entry, stop, target and actual exit prices to four decimal places.
• The event or reason: a data release, an RBI policy day, a chart level. Note when you learned of it.
• Costs, using your broker's contract note.
• Your state of mind: calm, hurried, revenge. Add whether you followed your plan.
• What you would change next time, in one sentence.

OneTradeJournal lets you record emotions, mistakes, plan deviation, stop, target, strategy and notes for each trade. You type the trade in yourself because it has no import or broker link. It can export your data as CSV, JSON or TXT for your own records.

Sample USDINR journal entry

This is a made-up trade, shown only to explain the layout. Prices and costs are invented.

Contract value for the same trade is 84.2000 x 1,000 = Rs 84,200 per lot, or Rs 2,52,600 for 3 lots. Margin is a separate amount your broker sets. Do not confuse the two.

Worked currency arithmetic with an assumed multiplier

Fictional worksheet: assume a linear currency contract quoted in rupees per foreign-currency unit. Buy 2 contracts at ₹84.20 and sell both at ₹84.25. For this example only, assume 1,000 underlying units per contract and ₹30 total costs. These are invented inputs; the multiplier is not a current exchange specification.

Price movement = ₹84.25 − ₹84.20 = ₹0.05 per unit. Gross profit = ₹0.05 × 1,000 × 2 = ₹100. Net profit = ₹100 − ₹30 = ₹70. The worksheet assumes the entire position is closed and the costs use the same rupee basis. Use your actual contract specification when checking a real record.

An options premium calculation or an inverse-quoted product can require a different method. A stop price also does not guarantee an execution at that price. Keep the contract document and actual broker result available when a simple multiplication does not explain the account record.

Add event context without inventing causation

If a policy announcement was part of your decision, write the announcement time, source and what you knew before entry. Keep later explanations separate. A trade near an RBI event does not by itself establish that the event caused its result, and a journal cannot demonstrate that a currency position hedged another portfolio simply because both were held together.

Use the trade-field checklist for consistent labels and the daily review to check missing entries. OneTradeJournal’s manual fields cover strategy, notes, emotion and plan deviation, with strategy and time analysis from logged trades. It does not promise dedicated RBI-event attribution or portfolio-correlation analysis.

Weekly currency trade review

• Count trades by pair: where did most of your result, good or bad, come from?
• Group by time of day. Currency contracts have their own session (9:00 am to 5:00 pm for the INR pairs), so see if a particular hour was weaker.
• Mark event days, such as RBI policy days, and compare them with ordinary days. See the RBI monetary policy page for background.
• Check each stop against what happened. Was it too tight, or did you move it?
• List every rule you broke and what triggered it.
• Total costs for the week against gross result.

Keep the review to a page. The point is to decide one change for next week, not to explain every tick. Our how to trade USDINR and currency trading basics guides give more background, and the forex trading journal page covers pair quotation.

Sources

• RBI: Foreign Exchange Transactions FAQ - checked 15 October 2026.
• OneTradeJournal: manual journal features - checked 15 October 2026.