Transactions: Record your investment activity

You should try and spend at least one hour a week on your investments. Spend your time reading quarterly reports, listening to conference calls, and reading related news. During this time, use Checklist Investor as a journal to record of your progress.

Before you execute any transaction (buy or sell) use Checklist Investor to help you validate your decision. For each Thing to Check, verify that you are complying with the spirit or detail of the Checklist item. If you are not complying, note this with a red X. If you are unsure if you comply, then use the yellow question mark. Use the Comments space to enter specific data related to the item (for example, answering the question, “How much debt does the company have?”).

You may change the transaction at any time. If for example, you were going to Buy a security, but realized while following your Checklists that more research needs to be done, simply change the transaction type to Thinking.

You may use multiple (up to 5) unique checklists per investment transaction.

Checking your TD Ameritrade balance automatically creates a Balance transaction, which is a snapshot of this information. In addition, each trade you make via TD Ameritrade is recorded as a transaction.

Screen shot of a Buy transaction using the Value Focus Checklist.

Create your own Transaction Types

The most common transaction types (Buy, Sell, Hold, Thinking, Short, Cover Short) are included with the software. But, you can also add an unlimited number of your own customized transaction types. For example you could add "High Risk Buy", "Watch-List1", etc.

You could add a 'Stock Idea' transaction. To get a quick snapshot on how your ideas are doing, press Quote.

TD Ameritrade transaction types

Each time you check your account balance and position details, a Balance transaction is automatically created. This allows you to easily go back an review what your balance and positions were at a specific date in the past.

When you place trades with TD Ameritrade, TDA-Buy, TDA-Sell, TDA-Sell Short, and TDA-Buy to Cover are used.