Top 5 Free Trading Journals

One of the best ways to boost your success rate in trading is through trade evaluation and assessment. As a trader, you need to review your previous trades to optimize your trading performance. This is where using a trading journal becomes necessary.

A good journal spreadsheet can help you monitor your consistency in following your setup. It is quite important to have a working trading strategy and a system to execute the plans. But more important than that is your ability to stick to the rules of your trading system and follow your plans consistently.

With a trading journal, you get to reflect on your record of trades so far and make useful evaluations. That way, you can figure out your areas of strength and key areas for improvement. If you do not revisit your trade history, the chances are that you might keep making the same mistakes over and over again. 

What is a Trading Journal

A Trading Journal is simply a chronological record of your trades. It is a log that helps you track your trading history from time to time. A typical trading journal spreadsheet contains the following main fields.

• The date and time of the trade
• The traded commodity or instrument
• The direction of the trade – whether it is a buy or sell
• Prices at both entry and exit points
• Size of your positions
• The outcome of the trades

Apart from the above-listed details, your journal may still have additional useful information about the trades. Examples include market commentary, charts, reasons for trading decisions, etc.

Why Do You Need A Trading Journal

• For trading accountability
• It enables you to identify the strong and weak points of your trading strategy.
• It helps you monitor your consistency in sticking to your trading rules.
• You can compare your trades with your goals within the same period to analyze performance.

Top 5 Free Trading Journals

Finding the best trading journal can be quite difficult due to the several options out there. After lots of research and trials, we’ve successfully identified the top five best free trading journals. Let’s take a look:

#1. TraderSync

Founded by David and Javier Olivares in 2014, TraderSync is one of the best trading journals around. It supports different instruments such as forex, stocks, futures, cryptocurrencies, and other options.

Features

• Interactive charts
• Import trading
• Trade Analytics
• Intraday – minute by minute – charting
• Share trading details and performance
• AI feedback system

Pricing

TraderSync provides different services at different levels and different prices. Their basic plan is free and includes unlimited trades, and supports manual entry.

They also have a Pro plan ($29.98/mo), Premium plan ($49.95/mo), and Elite ($79.95/mo). However, you get a discount of 13% when you subscribe yearly for any of the plans. There is also a free trial for all the paid plans.

#2. The Trade Archives

The Trade Archives is a strategy focused trading journal. It supports graphical data analysis using charts from Trading View.

Features

• Support for trade importing
• Interactive charts and graphs
• Tracking profit and loss progress
• Profit and Loss Daily Bar chart
• Calendar view
• Trade Sharing

Pricing

The Trade Archives offer a free plan with relatively limited services. Their Pro plan costs $24.95/mo on the monthly plans and $14.95/mo on the yearly plan. The Pro plan has a 7-day free trial.

#3. Trademetria

Trademetria was founded in 2016 by Thiago Ghilardi. It is a basic journal for analyzing trades based on certain trading metrics. It also supports trading with cryptocurrencies.

Features

• Portfolio tracker
• Trade import and trade export
• Account customization
• Multiple markets – stocks, forex, crypto, etc.
• Trade analytics
• Commissions tracker
• Trade sharing
• Image / Screenshots upload etc.

Pricing

Trademetria offers three plans: the free, basic, and pro plans. If you want a monthly subscription, the basic plan costs $19.95 per month, while the pro plan sells for $29.95/month.

For yearly subscriptions, Trademetria gives a whopping 30% discount. So the basic plan costs $169 per year while the Pro plan costs $249.

#4. Tradervue

Tradervue was created in 2011 by an experienced trader, Greg Reinacker. It doubles as both a trading journal and a social media platform where traders can share their trades.

Features

• Easy-to-use platform
• Auto chart generation
• Filtering of journals: You can search and filter trades by date, tag, symbol, etc.
• Coach or mentors can be granted access.
• Advanced trade analytics
• Trade Sharing
• Report generation

Pricing

Trademetria offers three plans: Free, Silver, and Gold plans. The Free plan includes a limited number of only 100 stock trades per month.

The Silver plan goes for $29/monthly and supports trading in stocks, forex, futures, and options. The Gold plan costs $49/monthly and includes some more advanced trading options. All the paid plans offer a 7-day free trial.

#5. Chartlog

Chartlog is a browser-based, easy-to-use trading journal built for day traders. It was launched in 2019 and already has over 1000 users.

Features

• Account Dashboard showing the changes or progress in performance over time
• Advanced analytics to help you discovered your most profitable time and strategies
• Interactive charts powered by TradingView.com
• Over 100 indicators on charts
• Market data for 16 US exchanges
• Automatic trade import
• Insights and reports on trading history and performance

Pricing

Chartlog offers just two plans: the Free and Pro plans. The Pro plan costs $49.99 per month on a monthly subscription but costs $479.88 per year for annual subscriptions. That’s $39.99 per month. Subscribers can also try it out for free.

Using a Trade Journal Spreadsheet

You can decide to customize your own trading journal if you do not want to use this listed software. Using a properly formatted Excel spreadsheet, you can record your trade data and track your performance and progress.

Apart from major fields such as date and time, market, instrument, you can record additional information such as comments or charts.

If you’re looking for a free excel trade journal to use, then Big Tradez Tracker may be your best bet. All you need to do is sign up, and a free copy of the spreadsheet will be sent to your mail.

Summary

Whether you’re trading forex, stocks, crypto, and the likes, it is very important you keep accurate records of your trade. Not only will you find out what has been working, but you can also discover areas that need attention. With a suitable trading journal, you can be sure you’re on course for a profitable trading experience.