A stock trading journal that explains your P/L

What a stock journal is for

If you trade stocks for long enough, you will have a month where the account goes up and you cannot say which decisions did it, and a month where it goes down and you are sure it was bad luck. A journal replaces both of those stories with evidence.

It does that by recording the things your broker cannot see: the reason you took the trade, the amount you planned to risk, where you meant to get out, and whether you followed your own rules.

The fields worth logging

• Ticker, direction, size, entry and exit - imported, not typed.
• Planned risk - the loss you accepted before entry. It turns every result into an R-multiple.
• Setup - breakout, earnings drift, gap fill, pullback to a moving average.
• Mistake - one honest tag when a rule was broken.
• Hold time - calculated for you. Many swing traders discover their best trades are the ones they did not cut early.
• A chart screenshot at entry and exit.

Why R beats dollars for stock traders

A $400 win on 100 shares and a $400 win on 2,000 shares are not the same trade. Measuring in R - the result divided by the risk you planned - makes a small-cap scalp and a large-cap swing comparable, and exposes the trades where you risked three times what you intended.

A strategy with a 40% win rate is profitable if the average winner is comfortably more than 1.5R. A 70% win rate loses money if the losers are three times the winners. Win rate alone cannot tell those apart; a journal can.

What you learn after fifty trades

Fifty tagged trades is enough to see a pattern. The usual discoveries: one setup carries the account, one weekday underperforms, stops get moved on the trades that turn into the largest losses, and the biggest winners were held longer than feels comfortable. None of those show up in a brokerage statement.

How it works in TradeReview AI

Export a CSV from your broker - Schwab, thinkorswim, Interactive Brokers, Robinhood, Webull, E*TRADE, Fidelity and most others provide one - and drop it in. Map the columns once and the layout is remembered. On the Pro plan, supported brokers sync on their own.

The dashboard shows profit factor, expectancy, maximum drawdown, payoff ratio and streaks, then splits results by setup, mistake, weekday, hour, long against short, and hold time. A calendar shows each day's result, and a PDF report packages it all when you want to review a month properly.

Questions

Which brokers can I import stock trades from?

Any broker that exports a CSV, Excel or JSON file, including raw transaction logs. The column mapper lets you match an unfamiliar export once and remembers it. Automatic broker sync is available on the Pro plan for supported brokers.

Is the stock trading journal free?

Yes. The journal, unlimited trades, imports, the full dashboard, screenshots, replay and PDF reports are free with no card. AI coaching, agents and automatic sync are paid.

Can I track swing trades that last several days?

Yes. Entry and exit dates and times are stored per trade, hold time is calculated, and results can be broken down by how long positions were held.

Does it track dividends or long-term investments?

It is built for active trading - positions with a defined entry, exit and planned risk - rather than for tracking a long-term portfolio.