Waiting for a friend to arrive, so decided to write up some comments. You're looking for feedback on the thing - here it is. Hope it helps.
General
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1. Tooltips and help. Cripes, I can barely tell what some of the icons are for.
2. Need Futures support.
Positions
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1. Need ability to add a comment at the same time you're adding an action.
2. Sometimes you only want to add a comment to the position instead of an 'action'. So need an 'action' that is just a comment.
3. Comments need to allow things like charts to be pasted in. If there is one thing I hate about excel is that its unable to add graphics in it's comments so can't include charts with my logs. Ideally, will have a full mark up tool for graphics inside the comments - I hate to have to capture my screen, paste it into another tool for markup and comments and then paste it into the log - ugg.
4. Allow the user to create user defined fields that show up in this screen (and every other screen frankly). You never know what the user wants to keep track of.
5. Need place to put account #. Can be trading different accounts. Reporting needs to take this into consideration.
6. Need place to put in trailed stop, trailed exit etc. Sometimes you put on a trade with the intention to exit in partials. Same thing for new trades -
sometimes the intention is to put on the trade in multiple parts. Need to be able to record and deal with that.
7. It looks like the "strategy" field is really the "timeframe" field.
8. Need fields for "strategy" and "sub-strategy".
Setup
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1. Prebuild the word "Other" into just about ever thing.
2. Prebuild the futures exchanges in there.
3. Prebuild the futures underlying symbols into the setup screen when you do that.
4. Timeframes need a description. Just because it's obvious that "D" means daily doesn't mean you shouldn't have a description column there.
5. Need user defined fields that show up in every screen - positions, action, comments.
Plan
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Make this the 2nd to last icon on the screen. After a while, it's something that isn't looked at that much.
Journal
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1. I tried pasting a LARGE image into the journal page - it cut it off and I can't move it around. THe only way it'll bring it back onto the screen is if I resize it
at which point it's too small to read. Need scroll bars in this thing.
2. Need to have the ability to use a pre-built grid in this journal. Why? Because my daily journal consists of my plan for the next day. That usually
includes a symbol and a bunch of other info in row by row format. Think an excel spreadsheet type control. Don't forget to pay a lot of attention to printing and allowing the user a lot of control over that to make it pretty.
Stats
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1. Need to allow user to select date range - defaulting to this year.
2. Need to show P&L by month.
4. Need to show P&L by day of the current month.
5. Need Filter for type (Stock, Futures, Options, FX etc).
6. Need Filter to look at those transactions that were deemed "mistakes". I wanna know how much my mistakes cost me!
7. Need filter by account.
Industries
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1. Consider duplicating this screen. The currnet one is great for stocks. But I'd like to see a 2nd one where I can put individual futures symbols on there.
Heck, allow the user to create a number of these screens. I can see doing this for industries, futures and individual stocks/etfs.
Database
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1. Need ability to "export" data to a new database and archive it from the current one. Filter by date range, account, instrument type.
2. Need ability to export data to an excel spreadsheet - especially the performance data.
Other
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1. Pricing - $99.00 or less. Few will bite for 279.00. I buy lots of throwaway software for 99.00 or less - I don't even think about it at that price level. Above that, I'll be more reluctant to buy it. Yeah, kinda silly but that's just me.
2. Consider allowing imports of trade confirms into a "staging area". Then, the user can tag rows of transactions to be moved to existing positions or
create new positions etc.
3. There needs to be a way for a user to pull together all the disparte pieces of information to create a printout that is "today's plan". I don't want to look at this product or deal with it in the middle of the day if I don't have to. I'll use pen and paper and write notes down on my printed plan but the less keyboard work I have to do in the middle of the day, the better. It can be multiple pages but I suggest keeping it to 3 pages or less. And allow the user to choose the components they want printed out.
4. How may transactions have you tested this thing with. How's the performance at, say, 10,000 trades. I notice that the "stats" is slow even at the current low demo level.
The Attachment
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I have attached a spreadsheet that I use every day for my own purposes for loggin. (And yes, I did change the account values and total contracts traded to something fictious though the relative number of contracts traded on each trade is accurate). Notice the "trade summary" sheet - I think something like this is needed in the stats section. Also, check out the "Print Daily Mkt Analysis" - This is what I think is needed as an option in the Journal section. Of course, you'll have to give the user the ability to create their own headings and formating and stuff....
-eLindy
