Why journal trades?
Every consistently profitable trader keeps a journal. Memory is unreliable — you remember the wins, forget the losses, and over time develop a fictional version of your own trading. A journal forces honesty: every losing trade is logged, every premature exit is logged, every "good" feeling that turned into a loss is logged.
What to track
- Date, symbol, direction, qty, entry, exit — the raw facts.
- Stop and target — what you planned, so you can compare to what happened.
- Setup / strategy — the pattern or thesis. After 50 trades, you'll know which setups work for you.
- Account — if you trade from multiple accounts, segregate so you can see per-account P&L.
- Notes — emotion, news catalyst, screenshot filename, lesson. The notes are where the alpha is.
Reading the KPIs
- Win rate — alone is meaningless. A 70% win rate with 1:0.5 R:R loses money.
- Profit factor — gross profits ÷ gross losses. >1.5 healthy, >2.0 strong, <1.0 losing strategy.
- Expectancy — average ₹ per trade. The single most important number — multiply it by trades-per-year for annual P&L.
- Equity curve — cumulative P&L over time. A smooth, gently-rising curve is rare and beautiful. A sawtooth is normal. A long flat or descending stretch means stop trading and review.
Privacy & portability
Trades are stored entirely in your browser's localStorage. Export JSON or Export CSV regularly to back them up — clearing browser data wipes the journal. Use the same JSON file to Import on another device.
FAQ
How many trades fit in localStorage?
localStorage typically allows 5–10 MB per origin. At ~500 bytes per trade with full notes, that's tens of thousands of trades — far more than you'll ever log by hand. Export JSON for permanent archives.
Can I import from Zerodha / Upstox / brokers?
Most brokers export to CSV. Open theirs, save with these column headers (date, symbol, side, qty, entry, exit, stop, target, account, setup, tags, notes, charges) in any order — Import will map by header name where possible.
Why doesn't the equity curve show today's open trade?
Open trades have no realised P&L, so they don't move the curve. They're listed in the table with a dash in the P&L column. Close them (add an exit price) and they fold into the equity curve.
What's R in the table?
R = (P&L) ÷ (planned risk per trade). If you risked ₹500 and made ₹1,500, that's +3R. R-based reporting is more useful than absolute ₹ once you change position sizes. Requires a stop loss to compute.