Actual Journal Recording?

J

Jackson3210

I've been trading for several years and looking for recommendations for any cut & dry, easy to upload journal/trade history setup that can relay info back easily that you use & like. I'm not happy with any of the paid journal services I've tried, and I no longer want to use my personal excel setup to document trades. Does anyone have a service or program they use and like?
Thanks & Godspeed fellow die-hards

Jack
 
If you want good answers on commercial software it would be nice if you mentioned first which commercial software you tried and did not like.

Personally, I use a fully developed Excel template which imports actual trade data from my trading software and where I've 'massaged' the data further as per my requirements. I use various VBAs to ensure efficient 1-click data importing and journaling as this can be a time consuming process otherwise. I have both daily and weekly reports. If I at some point feel like making changes I can do so, but currently I'm very happy. Took some time to develop of course.
 
Jackson3210 said:
I've been trading for several years and looking for recommendations for any cut & dry, easy to upload journal/trade history setup that can relay info back easily that you use & like. I'm not happy with any of the paid journal services I've tried, and I no longer want to use my personal excel setup to document trades. Does anyone have a service or program they use and like?
Thanks & Godspeed fellow die-hards

Jack
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Your broker may be providing customizable trade, P&L and other reports.
 
Laissez Faire said:
If you want good answers on commercial software it would be nice if you mentioned first which commercial software you tried and did not like.

Personally, I use a fully developed Excel template which imports actual trade data from my trading software and where I've 'massaged' the data further as per my requirements. I use various VBAs to ensure efficient 1-click data importing and journaling as this can be a time consuming process otherwise. I have both daily and weekly reports. If I at some point feel like making changes I can do so, but currently I'm very happy. Took some time to develop of course.
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Thanks for the response. Did you develop the excel format you are using yourself? I have tried putting one together and downloaded several that all required manual entry, it was too cumbersome & time consuming. I trade mostly futures and options, and the formats I've seen & tried are either for standard stock trades or forex. I've also used tradersync, wingman, and a few others but I didn't like them . If you know where i can find an excel template that accommodates options trades and unloadable trade data, I would appreciate it.
 
Jackson3210 said:
Thanks for the response. Did you develop the excel format you are using yourself? I have tried putting one together and downloaded several that all required manual entry, it was too cumbersome & time consuming. I trade mostly futures and options, and the formats I've seen & tried are either for standard stock trades or forex. I've also used tradersync, wingman, and a few others but I didn't like them . If you know where i can find an excel template that accommodates options trades and unloadable trade data, I would appreciate it.
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I developed it myself from scratch starting a few years back and improved it as my requirements became more clear. The final refinement was to solve everything with VBA such that I don't have to 'copy and paste'. This is to save time as journaling takes time and I want to be as efficient as possible with my time which is in short supply.

What I personally want as a day trader for each day is:

1. A technical breakdown of each trading session with my own comments + various charts.

2. A daily P&L report with my executions on a chart. I get this from my trading software Ninjatrader and copy it (with VBA) into my Excel template.

Finally, I have a weekly report in the same format.

If you need help with VBA - I suggest using UpWork to hire programmers.

I'm not aware of any online templates for free, nor am I interested in sharing my own (sorry). I'm sure there are custom solution which are great, but for customizing your journal I think Excel (or similar) is the way to go.

You might spend some time creating it, but when it's done, it's done.
 
I'm with LF. Custom Excel with automation. The customizing is key to making it worthwhile to improve your monthly P/L relative to risk. The automation makes it easy to use.

Just make sure you have a development plan for what you want. It is like designing real software. Excel and VBA are not the easiest nor modular systems to update and maintain once the system reaches a medium level of complexity.
 
Thanks Bad - I'm fairly fluent programming in excel among others but not close to a pro at it and i have a problem trying to converge trade data from more than one platform/broker without doing it manually in excel, and I am not expecting nor interested in a freeware setup. Has your comkpany done anything similar and do you have any screen shots or details you can show me?
 
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