The trade journal

The trade journal is a private record of your trading decisions. It needs an account with a verified email address. Only you can see your entries; there are no emails or reminders.

The plan

Write the plan before you trade: the symbol, long or short, setup tags, why you are taking the trade, what would prove it wrong (and the invalidation price), the planned entry and stop, up to four targets with the portion of the position to exit at each, and the planned size. US tickers such as AAPL and ASX codes ending in .AX, such as BHP.AX, are linked to the listing so the journal can show its latest price; other symbols are kept as typed, in the currency you choose.

The stop must be below the entry for a long trade and above it for a short; targets must be on the profitable side. The journal works out the risk per share (entry to stop), the planned risk amount (risk per share times size, called 1R) and the R-multiple of each target. If every target has a portion and they add up to 100%, it also shows the plan's R if every target is reached.

Fills

Record each fill with its date (and time if you like), price, quantity and fees. For a long trade the entry is a buy and the exit a sale; for a short trade the entry is a short sale and the exit a buy to cover. The status follows the fills: open while you hold a position, closed when it is back to flat. An exit larger than the position open at that moment is refused.

Results

• Realised P/L matches each exit against the average cost of the open position. Entry fees are shared across exits in proportion to the quantity each one closes, and each exit carries its own fees, so a closed trade includes every fee it paid.
• R multiple is the realised P/L divided by the planned risk recorded with the first entry fill. Moving the stop afterwards doesn't change it; the entry is marked "Plan revised after entry" instead. Without a planned stop and size there is no risk to measure against, so R is shown as unavailable.
• Holding period runs from the first entry to the last exit, or to now while the trade is open.
• Exits against the plan: each exit is "at a target" if it reached a target, "at the stop" if it was at the stop, "past the stop" if it was worse than the stop, or "before the target or stop" otherwise. An exit within a tenth of the planned risk per share of a level counts as reaching it. A trade is summarised by its least disciplined exit: exited late, then exited early, then stopped out, then target hit.

Review dashboard

After a trade, note what went to plan, the mistakes and the lessons, whether you followed the plan (yes, partly or no) and a rating from 1 to 5. The review dashboard covers closed trades:

• Win rate: trades with a profit after fees, out of all closed trades. A trade that breaks even counts as neither a win nor a loss.
• Average win and average loss in R, expectancy (the average R per trade) and profit factor (the total R of winning trades divided by the total R of losing trades). Trades without R are left out of these and the page says how many.
• Money results are shown per currency. Amounts in different currencies are never converted or added together.
• Breakdowns by setup tag (a trade with two tags counts under both), by your answer to "followed the plan?", by exits against the plan and by the month of the last exit.
• Open trades at their latest stored price, with the distance to the stop and to the next target as a share of the price, and the unrealised P/L before exit fees.

Linking to a prefilled plan

Other tools can open a new plan with values filled in. Nothing is saved until you choose Save plan. The parameters for /journal/create are:

• symbol: a ticker such as AAPL, BHP.AX or ASX:BHP
• direction: long or short
• entry, stop and size: positive numbers
• targets: up to four price:percent pairs separated by commas; the percent is optional

For example, /journal/create?symbol=BHP.AX&direction=long&entry=45.20&stop=43.90&size=100&targets=47.80:50,50:50 opens a long plan for BHP.AX with half the position to exit at 47.80 and half at 50.00. Anything that can't be read is left out and listed on the form.

Your data

Download your entries and your fills as CSV from the journal page. Your account data download includes them, and deleting your account deletes them.

The journal records your own decisions. It is general information only and doesn't suggest trades.