Top picks for trading journals
The best trading journal - TradesViz
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 TradesViz
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TradesViz is the best value for power users, and even the free tier allows stock-only traders to import up to 3,000 stock executions a month. I’m a pretty active trader, but I doubt I could ever trade that many times in a single month. The lowest premium tier is $19 a month and supports 10 accounts trading stock, stock options, futures, options on futures, forex, crypto, and CFDs. There are plenty of performance chart options and if you still aren’t getting quite what you want, the premium tiers include AI queries. The documentation is top-notch.
- Supports: Stocks, stock options, futures options, index options, forex, futures, crypto, CFDs
- Pricing: Free tier or $19.00 and $29.00 per month for premium tiers
- Mobile apps: No
Best completely free journal - Stonk Journal
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 Stonk Journal
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Don’t skip this site because of its meme stock name. It’s free (donations are gratefully accepted), attractive, and a great tool for beginning traders. Though trade importing isn’t supported, manually entered trades can include setups, target prices, stop-losses, notes, and confidence levels. Users can also attach screenshots. I was impressed enough to donate $15.
- Supports: Stonks… err, stocks, options, forex, futures, crypto
- Pricing: Donation supported
- Mobile apps: No
Excellent for individual traders - TraderSync
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 TraderSync
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TraderSync has a crisp design and can import trades from a long list of over 700 brokers. I like the layout of its dashboard. It’s an excellent choice for casual traders who use several brokers and trade several instruments. There is a free account available by chat request that doesn’t allow importing trades.
The premium tiers are expensive when compared to other options, but their Elite plan ($79.95/month) has an excellent paper stock trading simulator that allows you to practice trading against historical market data and assess your trading chops without risking real money. I found order entry a snap and I loved the excellent menu of chart studies.
- Supports: Stocks, options, futures, forex, cryptocurrency
- Pricing: Free (unlimited trades, manual entry), Pro ($29.95/mo), Premium ($49.95/mo), Elite ($79.95/mo). Paid tiers are 50% off if you pay for a year up-front.
- Mobile apps: iOS, Android
Automated chart screenshots - Tradervue
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 Tradervue
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Tradervue was one of the very first trading journals to come online, back in 2011. It isn’t the easiest to use and importing trades from some popular retail brokers might require creating and uploading CSV files. There’s better support for brokers that are popular with rapid-fire traders.
It does have one feature that really grabbed me: Tradervue automatically generates charts around entry and exit points, which spares users from the need to take screenshots while navigating rapidly moving markets. Did you notch a massive win? You can share that chart on their community page and reel in some serious trader cred. That alone might be worth the price of admission.
- Supports: Stocks, options, futures, forex
- Pricing: Free (30 stock trades/month), Silver ($29.95/mo), Gold ($49.95/mo)
- Mobile apps: No
Simple and streamlined design - Trademetria
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 Trademetria
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Trademetria's default view starts off basic, but I found it easy to customize my dashboard with reports and widgets, such as an economic calendar and a scrolling ticker. That’s a bit gimmicky, since if you’re thinking about using a trading journal, you are probably using a broker that has those already.
The premium pricing is reasonable (see below). The free tier allows importing of up to 30 trades a month; the Basic plan goes up to 500.
- Supports: Stocks, options, forex, futures, cryptocurrency, and CFDs (contracts for difference)
- Pricing: Free, Basic ($29.95/mo), Pro ($39.95/mo)
- Mobile apps: No
Easy to use - Chartlog
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 Chartlog
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Built for active traders, Chartlog 's starting "Lite" plan ($14.99/month) provides unlimited trade uploads, accounts (30-day history limit), and dynamic charts, while the Pro plan brings in strategy analysis, insights, pre/post-market data, and a few other premium features. Chartlog currently only supports a handful of big-name brokers and trading platforms such as Interactive Brokers, TradeStation, and Webull. Dozens more broker integrations are “coming soon,” something I noted last year. Chartlog can also automatically sync with a couple of brokers, which makes journaling a breeze. While there aren't as many features as on TraderSync, the crisp user interface and ease of use make Chartlog a viable option, provided you only want to import stock, ETFs, and options trades.
- Supports: Stocks, ETFs, options
- Pricing: Lite ($14.99/mo), Standard ($29.99/mo), Pro ($39.99/mo)
- Mobile apps: No
Unique ‘missed trades’ feature - Edgewonk
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 Edgewonk
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Edgewonk offers a pretty deep analysis of your trades. There are rich customization possibilities once you enter detailed notes and tags for each trade and a backtesting tool. Unfortunately, the broker import support is light for U.S.-based casual stock traders and is instead focused primarily on a handful of popular forex brokers and platforms like MetaTrader 4 (MT4). Multicurrency traders will appreciate profits and losses calculated in both the foreign and the home currency.
Edgewonk offers two unique features that I find particularly valuable for traders. First, its return forecaster uses past performance data to project potential future account performance, giving you insights into what to expect based on your history. Second, it allows you to track the trades you didn’t make—a feature that can either help you improve your decision-making skills or keep you up at night second-guessing them. In my experience, it’s likely to do both.
- Supports: Stocks, forex, futures, CFDs
- Pricing: $169/year (14 day trial period)
- Mobile apps: No
Bonus pick: Build your own trading journal using Excel
Online trading journals are convenient because they have most of the features traders could ever want. But, if you’re comfortable with Excel, you can easily create a trading journal of your own.
To get you started, here’s a free trading journal excel spreadsheet template to use, which includes all of the basics alongside a handful of advanced data points. Check out our full guide to using this Excel stock journal template to help get you started.
- Supports: Anything and everything
- Pricing: Free, minus the cost of Microsoft Excel
FAQs
What is a trading journal?
A trading journal is a running log that notes what you traded, when you traded, why you traded, and how much money you made or lost on each trade. Over time, a journal will reveal your trading strengths and weaknesses. Online journal apps aren’t mandatory, but they can automate most of the process and provide unique insights you might not come up with on your own.
Why use trading journals for post-trade analysis?
Trading journals provide you with an easy way to figure out what went right and what went wrong, and look back at your trade history. There is simply no better way to improve over time. Technical analysts have been using stock trading journals for decades.
Reviewing the film is a critical part of professional sports, and investing is no different. Taking a screenshot of the stock chart after the trade is completed, plotting buy and sell points, writing down your notes recapping the trade, and tweaking trade rules thereafter all fall under the post-trade analysis.
What are the steps to journaling a trade?
If you take the time to conduct post-trade analysis, you can improve your success rate and ultimately make more money from your investing. To do so, I suggest following these steps:
- Log the trade details - This includes the ticker symbol, trade date, buy price $, total shares, sell price $, return $, return % (at a minimum). Other great data points to track include stop price, risk, and commission spend, if you’re paying commissions.
- Download a stock chart and mark it up - Mark it up with your buy and sell points alongside any trendlines, support, resistance, etc. Then, mark this chart with the trade info and archive it. Some trading journals allow you to save screenshots with your trade. That’s great if you take the time to do it.
- Write your trade notes - Either on the chart itself, in your Excel journal, or on paper, write down what you did right and wrong and recap the reasoning behind the trade.
- Reflect back on trade data, chart, notes - This is the true "reviewing the film" exercise; identify potential bad habits, make rule tweaks, identify areas for improvement, and overall set the focus for the next trade.
- Archive for later use - Once you have reviewed the trade from start to finish and gone through the motions of a proper recap, save your trading journal entry.
Should you tag all of your trades?
Yes, by tagging each trade you can assess performance over time and identify whether or not the strategy you are using is successful. Tagging your trades means marking the strategy you used to make the trade.
Any good trading journal will allow you to filter performance by tag to view your biggest winners and losers. By looking back every so often, you can identify areas of improvement and tweak your trade rules for that strategy.
How do you use your trading journal to build strategies?
Here are a few tips for success that I’ve learned over the years when building a trading strategy:
- Have clear rules for each strategy - Consider having preset profit targets, objectives and position management rules, and make sure to tag each trade!
- Use numerical identifiers - Start your seed strategy with "1.0" and refresh the tags each time you adjust your rules so you can accurately track performance. You can progress to "1.1" or "2.0", etc. You'll be amazed when you compare the trades and performance of each iteration.
- Challenge yourself to improve across the board - Don't just analyze the net return of each strategy iteration. Look also at mistake %, time committed overall, trade frequency, and your overall emotions to assess true success. For example, day trading requires far more trades, time, and stress than buying and holding long.
In his book Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom, Van Tharp advocates finding the right strategy for you. The more you test different strategies and learn about yourself, the more successful you will be over time. I learned that, for me, day trading just isn't the right fit.
Are trading journals free?
Some apps offer free versions with restricted feature sets. If you are just getting started trading and you don’t need to bulk upload a long account history, consider trying the free version. Most beginning traders will be content with the relatively inexpensive “light” versions and, as said before, you can always create your own, too.
price_checkLet’s talk about cost.
Some of these journals have every bell and whistle their developers could think of, and to my mind that isn’t really necessary. Don’t pay for features you won’t use. If you’re trading casually, I think that most of the benefits from journaling come from entering all your trades, categorizing them by why you placed them, and analyzing your long-term performance. Prices listed in this guide don’t include any promotions and most, if not all, of the paid journals offer some kind of trial or deal, such as discounted rates for an annual subscription.
Are trade journals effective?
Yes, trading journals can be very effective. They force me to think through why I am entering and exiting positions and they eliminate excuses. The challenge, however, is keeping them up to date. It’s sort of like dieting and keeping a calorie count. When I’m making money, keeping a journal is a pleasure. When I’m losing on what seems like every trade, my journal will let me know loud and clear.
How do you maintain a successful trading journal?
What variables do successful traders use when logging trades in their trading journal? Here are 11 to always include:
- Stop Price $ - The Stop Loss price ($) which can be a physical stop loss order or a mental stop. Cutting your losses short is one of many crucial keys to successful investing.
- Strategy - Always tag each trade with the strategy used.
- Risk $ - This is the amount of capital being risked on the trade. So, if you buy 100 shares at $100, and your Stop is at $99, then you are effectively risking $100 on the trade. Risk can also be expressed as an "R" multiple (Van Tharp principle), and is a concept that has truly changed the way I approach trading.
- Risk % - The percent of capital risked on the trade. Referencing the previous example, the total risk would be 1% ($10,000 invested / $100 being risked).
- Target Price $ - Back to our example of buying long at $100, if we set our target price at $110, that means our goal is to hold the stock until it reaches at least $110. Once we reach our initial target price, we can check back in and consider trimming our position to take some profits, sell the entire position, or hold the position and set a new, higher price target.
- Return $ - The number everyone loves to see, which hopefully is a profit and not a loss. If our 100 shares of stock we bought at $100 reaches our $110 target price and we sell our full position to lock in profits, then we would realize a return of +$1,000 ($10 per share x 100 shares).
- Return % - The dollar return converted into a percentage. Sticking with our example, selling at $110 would yield a +10% return ($1,000 / $10,000).
- Return "R" - Applying R multiples, we convert the Return $ into "R". Using this same example, if we had risked $100 (1R), and made $1,000, then our return would be +10R.
- Mistake? - Did you make a mistake or break a rule with this trade? If yes, then you mark the trade as a mistake. Mistake tracking is one of the more underused, yet very powerful variables. By logging mistakes, you force yourself to replay the trade in your mind and reflect back on what went right and/or wrong.
- Notes - Not necessarily a variable, but writing notes when reflecting on the trade is important to help you learn from each trade. What went right, what didn't, what you were thinking when buying, selling, and so on are all examples of what can be journaled.
- Risk/Reward Ratio - The risk-reward ratio measures how much your potential reward is for each dollar you risk on the trade. Using the same long 100 shares at $100 trade example, with $99 as our stop and $110 as our target, our risk/reward ratio would be 1:10. As long as the trade works out at least once every 10 tries, we will still make money (excluding trade costs).
What is the appeal of day trading?
Let’s be clear: It’s tough to make money trading. You need to be disciplined enough to take losses, often several in a day and even several in a row. Losing days are common. If I’m lucky, my weekly trade journal will show three good days and two, well, not good days.
Every day, I start at zero. There’s no trading with the house’s money. I’m either making money or I’m burning it.
If you’re looking for the chance to get rich quickly, day trading provides that opportunity. But, if you actually want to get rich, you’re far more likely to do so by following three principles:
- Save more than you spend.
- Invest for the long term in a diversified, low cost portfolio.
- Aim to have your money to work for you, rather than vice versa.
So, then, why day trade?
It’s challenging and it’s fun. It’s you versus everyone else. I like trading because the markets are an endless stream of innovation, human emotions (especially fear and greed), and crowd behavior.
I believe that markets might look random, but are anything but. I enjoy trying to figure them out while learning something about myself in the process. I also like the immediate gratification of quickly being proved right or wrong.
All that said, for a list of compelling reasons why the average person may not want to day trade, head over to our guide on 10 Reasons to Avoid Day Trading.
Our Research
Why you should trust us
Sam Levine, CFA, CMT, formerly a lead writer for StockBrokers.com, has over 30 years of investing experience and actively trades stocks, ETFs, options, futures, and options on futures. He's held roles as a portfolio manager, financial consultant, investment strategist and journalist. He holds the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and the Chartered Market Technician (CMT) designations and served on the board of directors of the CMT Association.
Steven Hatzakis, global director of research for StockBrokers.com's sister site ForexBrokers.com, has been an active forex trader for more than 20 years. Steven has held numerous positions within the international forex markets, including writing, consulting and serving as a registered commodity futures representative. He is an active fintech and crypto industry researcher and advises blockchain companies at the board level.
How we tested
Our research team rigorously tests the most important features sought by beginning investors and traders, including the quality and variety of educational resources, ease of use of any available trading platforms and the availability of of market research and commentary suitable for novices. For this guide, we analyzed each stock journal in exactly the way we would use our own journal, looking for the features that would best set a trader up for success.
StockBrokers.com uses a variety of computing devices to evaluate trading platforms. Our reviews were conducted using the following devices: iPhone 12 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, MacBook Pro M1 with 8 GB RAM running the current MacOS, and a Dell Vostro 5402 laptop i5 with 8 GB RAM running Windows 11 Pro. In testing platforms and apps, our reviewers place actual trades for a variety of instruments.
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About the Editorial Team
Sam Levine has over 30 years of experience in the investing field as a portfolio manager, financial consultant, investment strategist and writer. He also taught investing as an adjunct professor of finance at Wayne State University. Sam holds the Chartered Financial Analyst and the Chartered Market Technician designations and is pursuing a master's in personal financial planning at the College for Financial Planning. Previously, he was a contributing editor at BetterInvesting Magazine and a contributor to The Penny Hoarder and other media outlets.
Steven Hatzakis is the Global Director of Research for ForexBrokers.com. Steven previously served as an Editor for Finance Magnates, where he authored over 1,000 published articles about the online finance industry. Steven is an active fintech and crypto industry researcher and advises blockchain companies at the board level. Over the past 20 years, Steven has held numerous positions within the international forex markets, from writing to consulting to serving as a registered commodity futures representative.
Carolyn Kimball is a former managing editor for StockBrokers.com and investor.com. Carolyn has more than 20 years of writing and editing experience at major media outlets including NerdWallet, the Los Angeles Times and the San Jose Mercury News. She specializes in coverage of personal financial products and services, wielding her editing skills to clarify complex (some might say befuddling) topics to help consumers make informed decisions about their money.
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