A futures trading journal for leveraged, fast markets

Why futures traders keep a journal

Futures are leveraged, open nearly around the clock, and move in ticks that are worth very different amounts from one contract to the next. A mistake costs more and happens faster than in most markets. The traders who last are the ones who can show, in numbers, that their losses stay the size they planned.

That is especially true on funded or evaluation accounts, where a single breach of a daily loss limit ends the account regardless of how profitable the strategy is.

What to record on every futures trade

• Contract and quantity - ES, MES, NQ, MNQ, CL, GC and so on.
• Planned risk in dollars - ticks times tick value times contracts. This is the number every result is measured against.
• Entry, exit and time - futures sessions have very different personalities hour to hour.
• Setup and mistake tags - the difference between a strategy and a string of trades.
• Fees and commissions - on high-frequency futures trading they are a real line item, not a rounding error.

The numbers that matter in futures

Maximum drawdown. The deepest peak-to-trough fall in your equity. For anyone trading an evaluation, this is the number that decides whether the account survives.

Actual risk against planned risk. A stop that slipped, a position added to, a limit moved - a journal that stores both numbers flags every trade where the loss was bigger than the plan.

Results by session hour. The open, the European overlap, the overnight session and the close behave differently. Most futures traders do well in one or two of those windows and give it back in the others.

Expectancy in R. The average result per trade in units of risk. Positive expectancy with controlled drawdown is the whole job.

Using TradeReview AI for futures

Import fills from your futures platform or broker as a CSV, with fees included, or log trades by hand with contracts and planned risk. Tag the setup and mistake, attach chart screenshots, and the dashboard shows drawdown, profit factor, expectancy, win rate against break-even win rate, and breakdowns by hour, weekday, setup and mistake.

Trading an evaluation? The prop firm trading journal page covers tracking daily loss limits and drawdown rules alongside the journal.

Questions

Can I log micro and mini contracts?

Yes. Record the contract and quantity with the planned dollar risk, and results are measured in R so micros and full-size contracts compare on the same scale.

Does it include commissions and fees?

Yes. Fees from your import are stored with each trade, so they are part of the record rather than forgotten.

Is it useful for prop firm evaluations?

Yes. Drawdown, planned against actual risk, and daily results are exactly what an evaluation is judged on. See the prop firm trading journal page for more.

Is the futures trading journal free?

Yes. Unlimited trades, imports, the dashboard, screenshots, replay and reports are free with no card. AI features and automatic broker sync are on paid plans.