ProTrader Journal Tutorial

ProTrader Journal guide

How to use the trading journal

A futures journal that turns every trade into numbers you can act on: P&L after fees, R-multiples, win rate, drawdown, and your edge by setup, session and instrument. This page explains each screen, each field and each figure.

Open the journal

1. Getting started

Create a free account or log in. Your journal is private: only you see your trades.
Open Settings > Accounts and set the starting balance of your Main account, or add one account per broker or prop firm account. Then set your risk per trade (for example 0.5% or 1%) in Risk & time zone. These drive the return %, the risk shown on each trade and the Size from risk helper.
In Settings > Fees, enter your all-in round-turn fee per contract (broker + exchange + NFA) for the contracts you trade. New trades fill the fee in for you.
In Settings > Rules & goals, set a daily loss limit and a maximum number of trades per day. The Overview shows both every day.
Log your first trade with New trade (or press N), or import your history from a CSV file.

Visitors who are not logged in see a sample journal with about 170 generated trades, so you can explore every screen before signing up.

2. Logging a trade

The form computes everything live in the Trade math panel while you type.

Instrument: CME futures with their contract specs (point value and tick). Micro and E-mini indices, gold, silver, crude, natural gas, copper, bitcoin, ether and the main currency futures are built in. Add any other contract under Settings > Custom instruments.
Direction, contracts: Long or short, and the number of contracts. Size from risk computes the largest whole number of contracts that keeps the distance to your stop within your risk per trade.
Entry and exit time: Entered in the time zone set in Settings (New York by default). The exit time is optional; when given, the journal reports your average holding time.
Entry, exit, stop, target: Leave the exit blank to log an open trade and complete it later. The stop is your initial stop: it defines 1R, so log it on every trade. Both a decimal point and a decimal comma are accepted (4520.25 or 4520,25).
Fees: Total round-turn fees for the trade, deducted from the gross P&L.
Setup: The name of the pattern you traded (Order Block, Liquidity Sweep...). Use the same names as in your Playbook so each setup gets its own statistics.
Psychology & execution: Emotional state, a 1 to 5 execution rating, whether you followed your plan, and mistakes (chased entry, moved stop, oversized...). Analytics shows what each mistake costs you.
Tags, notes, charts: Free tags (trend day, news day, A+ setup), your notes, a post-trade review, and up to 8 charts per trade: TradingView snapshot links or uploaded screenshots (5 MB each, several at once). Label each one (Before, Entry, Exit, After, Higher TF...). On the trade sheet, click a chart to open the viewer: arrow keys or a swipe to browse, a click on the image to zoom.

Safety net. The journal refuses an exit, stop or target that is more than twice or less than half the entry, because that almost always means a decimal separator slip (1.3330 typed as 1333), and it asks you to double-check any price more than 20% away. It also warns you when a stop is on the wrong side of the entry or a price is off the instrument's tick grid.

How P&L is computed: price move × point value × contracts − fees. Example: long 2 MNQ from 24,510.25 to 24,552.75 is a 42.5-point move; 42.5 × $2 × 2 = $170 gross, minus $2.48 of fees = $167.52 net.

3. Overview

The filter bar (period, instrument, setup, side) applies to Overview, Trades and Analytics.

Rules & goals: today's P&L against your daily loss limit, trades taken against your maximum, and progress toward your weekly and monthly targets. These always use today's date, whatever the filters.
Key figures: net P&L, win rate, profit factor, expectancy, average win and loss, maximum drawdown, number of trades and green days.
Equity curve: cumulative net P&L trade after trade, with the drawdown from the previous high shaded underneath.
Daily P&L: one bar per trading day. Click a bar to open that day.
Edge by setup and recent trades.

4. Trades

Every trade in a sortable table: search notes, setups and tags; filter by outcome, status, tag or mistake; sort by date, symbol, P&L or R. Click a row to see the full trade, then edit, duplicate (handy for the same setup tomorrow) or delete it. Tick several rows to delete them together. On a phone the table turns into a list of cards.

5. Calendar and daily journal

The calendar colours each day by its result; the stronger the colour, the bigger the day compared with the rest of the month. The last column adds up each week. Click a day to see its trades and write that day's journal.

The Daily journal tab gives the same journal full screen: market conditions, mood and plan before the session; recap, mistakes and lessons after it; and four scores from 1 to 5 (discipline, plan adherence, emotional control, overall day). Ctrl + S saves.

6. Analytics

Group your closed trades by setup, instrument, session, day of the week, hour, side, grade, tag, mistake, emotion, whether you followed your plan, or account. Each group shows trades, win rate, net P&L, profit factor, expectancy and average R.

Sessions are computed in New York time: Asia 18:00 to 02:00, London 02:00 to 07:00, New York AM 07:00 to 12:00, lunch 12:00 to 13:30, New York PM 13:30 to 16:00, after hours 16:00 to 18:00.

The page also shows the distribution of your results in R, a full statistics list and a month-by-month returns table (click a month to open it in the calendar).

7. Playbook

Write each setup down: its pre-trade checklist, context, entry trigger, confirmations, stop, targets, management, best sessions and times to avoid. Each card shows the live statistics of the trades logged under that setup name. The page also lists the setups you trade without written rules, so you can document them.

8. Accounts and prop firm rules

Create one account per broker account, prop firm evaluation or funded account (Settings > Accounts). When you have two or more, an account selector appears under the journal title: pick one to see only its trades in every tab, or All accounts to see everything together. Each trade belongs to one account; select trades in the Trades tab and use Move to change it.

For a prop account, copy the firm's rules into the account. Every box is optional:

Max loss (drawdown): Static: the level stays at starting balance minus the max loss. Trailing, end of day: the level rises with your highest end-of-day balance. Trailing, intraday: it rises with your highest balance, including the best open profit of a trade when you log its best price (MFE). Trailing stops at is the balance where the level stops rising (often the starting balance).
Daily loss limit: Today's room is shown on the Overview; past days that hit the limit are listed.
Profit target, minimum trading days: Progress bars on the Overview. The account shows Target reached when the target, the minimum days and the consistency rule are all met.
Consistency rule: Your best day may not exceed this share of your total profit. The journal shows the share and, when it is too high, the total profit you need for the best day to fit.
Max contracts: Trades above the cap are flagged.

Check with your firm. Firms change their rules often and some count trading days from 6 pm New York time. The journal replays your closed trades in order and counts days by the calendar date of the exit, so treat it as a close tracker, not the firm's official figure.

9. Scale-outs, MAE and MFE

Scale out (next to the exit price) splits the exit into fills: contracts, price and time of each one. The journal uses the average exit price for P&L and R, and the last fill time as the exit time. If the fills do not cover every contract, the trade stays open and its detail shows the realized part.

Worst price (MAE, maximum adverse excursion) is the furthest the market went against you while you were in the trade; best price (MFE, maximum favorable excursion) is the furthest it went in your favour. NinjaTrader 8 exports carry both and the import keeps them. With them, Analytics adds a Trade management card: how much heat your winners take, how far your losers went your way first, how much of the best move your winners keep, and how many winners a tighter stop would have cut.

10. Pre-trade checklist and grade

Give each Playbook setup a checklist, one rule per line. When you pick that setup on the trade form, its rules appear as tick boxes and the trade is graded: A+ when every rule is met, B when at least 60% are, C below that. You can set the grade by hand, and grade trades of setups without a checklist. The Grade view in Analytics then shows whether your A+ trades really pay more than the rest.

11. Weekly and monthly review

The Review tab builds the report of a week (Monday to Sunday) or a calendar month, for the selected account. Use the arrows to move from one period to the next.

Key figures with the change from the previous week or month: net P&L, win rate, profit factor, expectancy, trades, average R, drawdown and green days.
Day by day chart, best and worst trades, setups, sessions, mistakes and your personal rules (daily loss limit, trades per day, risk per trade).
Findings: sentences with numbers, computed from your trades. For example: after 2 losses in a row your win rate drops to 31%, the NY lunch session cost you $1,200, trades after your 3rd of the day lose money, you hold losers 2× longer than winners. Each finding links to the lesson of the site that addresses it. When a period has fewer than 30 closed trades, the findings use the 90 days that end with it, because small samples mislead.
Print / PDF prints the report on white paper, with three questions to answer by hand. Use your browser's “Save as PDF” to keep a copy.

Mistakes and lessons. Each mistake you tag is linked to the lesson that fixes it (moved stop to stop management, chased entry to optimal entries, revenge trade to recovering from losses...). The link shows on the trade sheet, in Analytics > Mistakes and in the review.

12. Compare two periods

Review > Compare periods puts two periods side by side: last month against the month before, this month or this week so far, the last 30 days against the 30 before, before vs after a date (the day you changed a rule, a stop method or a setup) or any two custom ranges. You get every key figure with its change, both cumulative P&L curves by trading day, and setups, sessions, grades and mistakes in both periods.

13. Risk of ruin (Monte Carlo)

At the bottom of Analytics, the journal replays your own closed trades 5,000 times in random order (drawn with replacement) to show the range of what the next 25 to 500 trades could look like at your current size. You read the risk of ruin (the share of simulated futures that lose the amount you chose: 10% to 75% of the starting balance), the chance of ending in profit, the median and the bad-case result, the drawdown and the longest losing streak to expect.

Position size: As logged uses your dollar results; Fixed risk per trade replays your R-multiples at the dollar risk you type, to test a smaller or larger size before you trade it (it needs 20 trades with a stop).

Prop firm accounts: select an account with a max loss in the account bar and the simulation plays a new account with its rules (static, end-of-day or intraday trailing max loss, daily loss limit, profit target, minimum days), drawing whole trading days. It returns the chance to pass, the chance to bust and how many days each usually takes. The consistency rule is not simulated.

The simulation assumes your next trades look like your past ones. Below 30 trades treat it as a rough idea; past 100 it becomes a useful measure.

15. Email reminders

Settings > Email reminders sends a short e-mail at the hour you pick (in your journal’s time zone), on the days you pick: the day’s trades (count, win rate, net, R) and a link straight to the daily journal. Keep Only when today’s daily journal is still empty ticked and it stays silent on the days you already wrote it. Every e-mail has a one-click link to turn reminders off.

16. Install the app

The journal installs like an app: it opens full screen from your home screen or dock, with shortcuts to New trade, Daily journal and Calendar (long-press the icon). In Chrome or Edge use Install app in the journal header or the install icon in the address bar; on Android, Add to Home screen; on iPhone and iPad, open the journal in Safari, tap Share then Add to Home Screen. Your trades stay on the site: the app needs a connection to load and save them.

17. Import and export

NinjaTrader 8: Control Center > New > Trade Performance, generate, open the Trades tab, right-click > Export, save as CSV. The Account column sends each trade to the account of the same name (created if needed, so copy trading across several accounts is kept), and the MAE and MFE columns are kept.
Tradovate: Reports > Performance, download the CSV.
Any other file: the columns Date, Symbol, Side, Contracts, Entry and Exit are enough; Stop, Target, Commission, Setup, Notes, Tags and Mistakes are read when present. Download the template from the import window.

Contract months are removed from symbols (MNQZ5, /MNQZ25 and "NQ 12-25" become MNQ and NQ). The import shows a preview first, skips trades already in your journal and lists the rows it cannot read with the reason. Export downloads every trade with all fields as a CSV that opens in Excel or Google Sheets.

Data health (Settings > Import, export & data) scans your journal for prices that are 10, 100 or 1,000 times away from the rest of the same instrument, proposes the corrected value and recomputes the P&L of the trades you fix. Recalculate P&L recomputes every trade from the current contract specs.

18. Metrics glossary

Net P&L: Sum of the net results (after fees) of closed trades.
Win rate: Winning trades divided by closed trades.
Profit factor: Gross profit divided by gross loss. Below 1 the strategy loses money; above 1.5 is solid.
Expectancy: Net P&L divided by the number of closed trades: what an average trade is worth.
Payoff ratio: Average win divided by average loss. A 40% win rate is profitable with a payoff above 1.5.
R-multiple: Net result divided by the initial risk (distance from entry to stop × point value × contracts). +2R means you made twice what you risked. Needs a stop on the trade.
Maximum drawdown: The largest fall of the equity curve from a previous high, in dollars and in percent of the account at that high.
Planned R:R: Distance to the target divided by the distance to the stop, before the trade.
Green days: Trading days that closed positive, out of all days with at least one closed trade.

19. FAQ

Who can see my trades?

Only you. Each journal is tied to your account and every request checks that the trade belongs to you.

Can I use it for a funded or prop account?

Yes. Set the account balance to the evaluation size and use the daily loss limit to mirror the firm's rule.

Why does a trade show no R?

R needs the initial stop. Edit the trade and add it; the R-multiple appears immediately.

My times look off by a few hours.

Set the time zone you type your entries in under Settings > Account & risk. Sessions and hours are converted to New York time.

Can I get my data out?

Yes, at any time: Export downloads every trade as CSV.

The journal is an educational record-keeping tool. It gives no trading advice. Trading futures involves substantial risk of loss.