Study v1.0

TRADE MANAGER + TRADING JOURNAL: BUNDLE

Name: TRADE MANAGER + TRADING JOURNAL: BUNDLE
Brand: SCS: Sierra Chart Studies
Price: 19.50 USD
Availability: InStock

The complete Sierra Chart execution + analysis stack on one simple plan: position sizing, one-click orders, and automatic journaling with tick-level analytics

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Demo: TRADE MANAGER

TRADE MANAGER: Features

Automatic position sizing from your drawn stop line: percent risk or fixed $ risk
Live account balance fetched automatically on live accounts, manual balance for Sim/Demo
One-click order entry with 6 order types (Buy/Sell Stop, Limit, Market)
Five take-profit modes: R Ratio, Points, Ticks, Fixed $, and % of Balance
Commission-aware risk sizing, with optional block if even 1 contract exceeds your risk
Break-even tools: Auto Break-Even, Move to BE Now, and Arm BE at Price
Cursor Action Mode: act at the cursor instantly (keyboard shortcuts) or click on chart after pressing (toolbar buttons)
Horizontal Line at Cursor, plus Delete Last / Delete All Trade Manager lines
Half Size and Half Orders: fast partial exits with Floor/Ceil rounding
Real-time risk adjustment (Risk Up / Risk Down) and directional filter (block all, LONG only, SHORT only)
Safety layer: live-entry kill switch, max total position, min entry spacing, entries-per-window cap, max order quantity, min stop distance
Anti-storm ACS button protection and duplicate button-number warnings
16 fully configurable ACS button actions
Optional Sync Mode: share risk and direction state across charts, take profit stays per-chart
Cross-symbol aware sizing: uses the trade symbol tick size and tick value
Works with both live and simulation accounts, Sierra Chart ACSIL native with low overhead

TRADE MANAGER: Description

Trade Manager is an all-in-one trading panel for Sierra Chart that consolidates position sizing, order entry, position reduction, and directional filtering into a single, fully configurable study. Designed for active traders who need speed, precision, and risk control without switching between multiple tools.

Seamless Trading Journal Integration

Trade Manager works hand-in-hand with the Trading Journal. When you enter a position with Trade Manager, the stop loss level you drew on the chart is automatically passed to the Trading Journal, which means your R-values are computed and recorded automatically, without ever entering anything manually. Every trade ends up in your journal with its exact risk reference, MFE, MAE, and tick-level P&L curve, ready for analysis.

Automatic Position Sizing

Trade Manager calculates your order quantity automatically to fit the risk amount you define, with no manual math required. The quantity is rounded down to whole contracts, so a trade usually risks slightly less than your amount; if even one contract would exceed it, you can either place that single contract or have the order blocked entirely (see Commission-Aware Risk Sizing below).

Two risk modes available:

Percent mode: risk is expressed as a percentage of your account balance. On live accounts, the balance is fetched automatically from Sierra Chart. On simulation accounts, you set it manually via the Account Balance input.
Fixed $ mode: risk is a fixed dollar amount, regardless of account size.

Real-time risk adjustment: Two dedicated ACS buttons (Risk Up / Risk Down) let you increase or decrease your risk level instantly, directly from your chart. The step size is configurable independently for each mode (e.g. 0.25% per click in percent mode, $100 per click in fixed mode). The current risk value is always displayed as a text label directly on the chart.

One-Click Order Entry: 6 Order Types

Draw a horizontal line on the chart to define your stop loss level, then click any of the 6 order buttons. The quantity is automatically calculated based on the distance between your entry and the stop line.

Button	Order type	Entry price
Buy Stop	Stop order	Cursor position
Buy Limit	Limit order	Cursor position
Sell Stop	Stop order	Cursor position
Sell Limit	Limit order	Cursor position
Buy Market	Market order	Last price
Sell Market	Market order	Last price

Stop loss is automatically attached at the drawn line level.
Take profit is attached automatically using the TP mode you choose (see below).
Orders are routed to live trade service or simulation automatically based on account type.

Take Profit Modes

Take profit placement is fully configurable through a single Mode selector, so the same panel fits any target style:

R Ratio (default): TP at a multiple of the stop distance (default 5R, adjustable 0.5R to 50R)
Points: TP a fixed number of points from entry
Ticks: TP a fixed number of ticks from entry
Fixed $: TP at a target dollar profit on the filled quantity
% of Balance: TP at a target percentage of account balance

Commission-Aware Risk Sizing

When Include Commission in Risk is enabled, the round-trip commission per contract is added to the per-contract risk denominator, so the worst-case loss including commission stays within the risk amount you configured. The round-trip commission per contract is set in a dedicated input (for example, NQ at IBKR is roughly $4.50 round-trip per contract).

Block Order If 1 Contract Exceeds Risk: when enabled, the order is rejected entirely if even a single contract would risk more than your configured amount, instead of silently placing that one contract. The risk comparison includes commission when commission-aware sizing is on. Off by default, so existing behavior is preserved unless you opt in.

Directional Filter

An optional toggle button cycles through three states:

X: all order entry blocked (full lock)
LONG only: only buy orders are allowed
SHORT only: only sell orders are allowed

The current state is displayed as a text label on the chart. This feature can be enabled or disabled entirely via the study settings.

Half Size: Close Half at Market

One button sends a market order to close exactly half of your current open position, whether long or short. Rounding mode is configurable:

Floor (default): rounds down (conservative, closes the smaller half)
Ceil: rounds up (closes the larger half)

Half Orders: Close Half via Limit or Stop

Places a passive order to close half your position at the cursor price. The order type is determined automatically:

Position	Cursor vs last price	Order placed
Long	Above last price	Limit sell at cursor
Long	Below last price	Stop sell at cursor
Short	Below last price	Limit buy at cursor
Short	Above last price	Stop buy at cursor

Same rounding mode (Floor / Ceil) applies as Half Size.

Reducing attached orders: Half Size and Half Orders send a normal reducing trade. To have Sierra Chart adjust your attached Stop Loss and Take Profit to the remaining size, enable Scale Out in Sierra Chart (Global Settings > General Trade Settings). This is a one-time Sierra Chart setting. Note: for a limit scale-out, Sierra Chart can leave the limit working if the position is stopped before it fills; use multiple attached targets when you need that managed natively.

Break-Even Automation

Trade Manager can move the Stop Loss attached to your position to break-even, three ways (all on a single Trade Manager bracket, no scale-in):

Auto Break-Even: opt-in (off by default), trigger-based. Choose a trigger mode (R Ratio, Points, Ticks, Fixed $, or % of Balance) and an Auto BE Offset (ticks past entry). Once the favorable excursion reaches the trigger, the attached stop moves to break-even once per trade.
Move to BE Now: an ACS action (keyboard shortcut or visible button) that moves the stop to break-even instantly.
Arm BE at Price: arm a price level (at the cursor, or click-to-arm depending on Cursor Action Mode), and the stop moves to break-even when price reaches it.

Cursor Action Mode

Every cursor-priced action (Arm BE at Price, Buy/Sell Limit, Buy/Sell Stop, Half Orders, Horizontal Line at Cursor) follows a single Cursor Action Mode selector:

At cursor on button press (default): the action uses the price under your mouse the instant it fires. Best with keyboard shortcuts, since your mouse stays on the chart.
Click on chart after pressing button: the action waits for your next chart click to set the price. Made for visible Control Bar buttons, because clicking a toolbar button moves the mouse off the chart, so there is no live cursor price at press time.

Horizontal Line Tools

Horizontal Line at Cursor drops a standard horizontal line at the cursor price in one step, no Tools menu needed. The line is a normal user-drawn drawing: draggable, deletable, it stacks (each press adds a new one), and it can serve immediately as your Trade Manager stop line. It honors Cursor Action Mode, and its color and width are configurable.

Two companion actions clean up instantly (no chart click needed):

Delete Last Horizontal Line: removes the most recent line dropped by Trade Manager
Delete All Horizontal Lines: removes all of them at once

Only lines dropped via Horizontal Line at Cursor are tracked and removed; your manually drawn lines are never touched.

Safety Layer

A dedicated Safety section hard-bounds what a single click, a runaway loop, or a misbehaving physical button can do:

Allow LIVE Entries: kill switch; set to No to hard-disable live entries while Sim entries keep working
Max Total Position: rejects any entry whose projected position would exceed the cap
Min Entry Spacing: minimum interval between two accepted entries
Max Entries Per Window: caps accepted entries per rolling time window
Max Order Quantity: hard ceiling on a single order quantity, always active
Min Stop Distance: rejects an entry whose stop line is drawn too close to the entry price
Order Button Debounce Cooldown: optional per-button cooldown for flickering hardware

On top of these, an anti-storm latch guarantees each ACS button fires exactly once per genuine press, and a collision detector warns in the message log if two actions share the same ACS button number.

Configuration

The Settings dialog is organized into clearly labeled sections (General, Risk Sizing, Take Profit, Order Behavior, Display, ACS Buttons, Diagnostics, Auto Break-Even, Safety, Cursor Action, Line Deletion) so every input is easy to find. Sync Mode lets multiple Trade Managers share live trading state across charts (risk %, fixed risk, account balance, and block direction; the Take Profit stays per-chart): click Risk Up on any synced chart and they all update at once, or turn it off to give a chart its own independent state.

All 16 ACS button assignments are individually configurable: enter the real Sierra Chart ACS button number for each action directly in the study settings. Each action maps to a Sierra Chart Custom Study Control Bar Button number, and the recommended setup is to bind those numbers to keyboard shortcuts, so you trigger every action without moving the mouse to the Chart Shortcut Bar (showing the buttons on the bar is optional). Many other settings, such as text label positions (X/Y), chart region, font size, and risk step sizes, are adjustable without editing code.

Default ACS button layout:

ACS #	Action
1	Buy Stop
2	Buy Limit
3	Sell Stop
4	Sell Limit
5	Buy Market
6	Sell Market
7	Half Size (market)
8	Half Orders (limit/stop)
9	Risk Down
10	Risk Up
11	Direction Toggle
24	Move to BE Now
25	Arm BE at Price
26	Horizontal Line at Cursor
27	Delete Last Horizontal Line
28	Delete All Horizontal Lines

Requirements

Sierra Chart with ACSIL custom study support
Auto Trading Enabled - Global must be turned ON in the Sierra Chart trading window. Without it, the order buttons will not place trades. (Trade > Auto Trading Enabled - Global)
A horizontal line drawn on the chart (using Sierra Chart's built-in drawing tool) before placing orders; this line defines the stop loss level
Keyboard shortcuts (recommended) or visible Chart Shortcut Bar buttons, configured in Global Settings, to trigger the actions
Sierra Chart Scale Out enabled (Global Settings > General Trade Settings) when using Half Size or Half Orders with attached Stop and Target orders
Compatible with both live and simulation accounts

TRADING JOURNAL: Features

20 key performance metrics: Total Trades, Trading Days, Win Rate, Profit Factor, Expectancy, Sharpe, Sortino, Calmar, Recovery Factor, Max Drawdown, Account Balance, Account Growth, and more
14 interactive charts: equity curve, daily P&L, R by time of day, drawdown, R distribution, MFE/MAE, rolling averages, Monte Carlo
Yearly heatmap + monthly calendar: GitHub-style grid showing every trading day color-coded by performance
Gallery tab: every trade with a screenshot as a visual card grid, 1–6 cards per row, configurable image height, respects every toolbar filter
Per-trade custom gallery thumbnail: pick which screenshot represents a trade and frame exactly the region with a draggable / resizable crop rectangle, auto-saved
Paste screenshots from clipboard (Ctrl+V or click): copy a chart snippet from Sierra Chart or anywhere and paste directly into the trade / session detail with zero save-to-disk step
Drag & drop screenshot reorder inside each trade, the new order is persisted and drives the Gallery fallback thumbnail
Trade detail panel: entry/exit, R-value, MFE/MAE, intra-trade PnL curve from SCID tick data, notes, checklist, screenshots
Intra-trade PnL curves: tick-by-tick P&L from Sierra Chart binary SCID files with FIFO lot tracking
Monte Carlo simulation: 1,000 reshuffles showing P5–P95 band, ruin probability, and worst case
Trade comparison: select two trades for side-by-side metric and PnL curve comparison
Similar trade matching: algorithmic top-5 similar trades by symbol, direction, time, and checklist overlap
Automatic Sierra Chart import: watches your journal folder and imports new trades every 5 seconds
Two import methods: SC TradesList (manual import) and NDJSON real-time feed (automatic via Sierra Chart study)
Multi-account support: multi-select account filter in the toolbar, new accounts auto-included on import, multi-account TradesList exports parsed defensively at boundaries
Per-account, per-symbol commissions: set commission rates per account per instrument in a searchable table, plus a Recompute button to re-apply to every imported trade
Deleted-trade tombstone: deletes are permanent, the NDJSON watcher never silently resurrects rows you removed
One-click chart replay: opens the trade in Sierra Chart at the exact entry time with fill markers
Trade and session checklists: custom items with correlation analysis showing which habits predict profitability
Rules & risk management: max trades/day, max R loss, max $ loss, time windows, with violation tracking
Missed trade tracking: log entries you identified but didn't take to measure opportunity cost
R-value and dollar display toggle: switch the entire journal between risk multiples and dollar amounts
Session detail panel: daily stats, running PnL chart, rule violations, screenshots (paste & drag-drop), and session notes
Hour × Day heatmap: average R for each hour of each weekday to find your optimal trading window
Auto-save Settings: every preference persists the moment you interact with it, no Save button
Merged Rules & Settings page: one split view with collapsible dropdowns, ⓘ tooltips, count badges, and Expand all / Collapse all icons
Centralized Show / Hide: toggle visibility of every Toolbar Filter, Tab, KPI card, Dashboard pane, and Trade detail section individually
Clickable attachment badges on the Trades table: camera icon opens screenshot lightbox with keyboard navigation, note icon opens notes preview
Trades columns menu: show / hide every column individually, preferences persisted, horizontal scrolling on overflow
What's new popup: lists Added / Changed / Fixed for every release between the last one you saw and the current one, so skipping updates never hides release notes
CSV and PDF export: export filtered trades or the full dashboard with all charts
Supports 50+ futures: indices, energy, metals, treasuries, currencies, grains, softs, crypto, plus auto-registration for any custom symbol
Account tracking: set your initial balance and see current account balance and growth percentage on the dashboard
Built-in auto-updater: check for updates and download new versions directly from within the app
Desktop application: runs entirely on your machine, SQLite database, no cloud, no third-party data sharing

TRADING JOURNAL: Description

Trading Journal is a desktop application purpose-built for Sierra Chart traders who want to track, analyze, and improve every trade they take. Unlike web-based journals that require manual entry and store your data on third-party servers, Trading Journal imports directly from Sierra Chart, reads tick-level data from your SCID files, records optional per-trade screen clips, and runs on your machine with a local SQLite database. Trades, notes, screenshots, and videos stay local; internet is used for license activation, subscription refresh, and updates.

Dashboard

The main dashboard provides a complete statistical overview of your trading performance across any filtered date range, symbol, direction, account, strategy, checklist, or session-checklist combination. The layout is fully customizable: click the floating pencil button to unlock drag & drop reordering of dashboard panes AND KPI cards, and use the centralized Show / Hide settings section to toggle individual KPIs, dashboard panes, toolbar filters, tabs, and trade detail sections. The layout is locked by default to prevent accidental changes. A sticky notes section lets you pin reminders and observations directly on the dashboard. The dashboard also includes Edge Performance and PropFirm account panes when those systems are configured.

Date filters persist across app restarts, so you always return to the view you left.

20 Key Performance Metrics

Metric	Description
Total R / Total PnL	Cumulative risk-adjusted return or dollar P&L
Total Trades	Number of closed trades in the selected period
Trading Days	Number of days with at least one trade
Trades Win%	Percentage of trades closed with positive net PnL
Days Win%	Percentage of trading days with positive net PnL
Total Commissions	Sum of all commission costs
Profit Factor	Gross profit divided by gross loss
Expectancy	Average PnL per trade: expected gain per trade
Average PnL / Average R	Mean net PnL or R-value per trade
Avg Daily PnL	Mean net PnL per trading day
Max Drawdown	Largest peak-to-trough decline in equity
Max DD (R)	Maximum drawdown measured in R multiples
Max Consec Wins	Longest streak of consecutive winning trades
Max Consec Losses	Longest streak of consecutive losing trades
Sharpe Ratio	Risk-adjusted return relative to volatility
Sortino Ratio	Like Sharpe, but only penalizes downside volatility
Calmar Ratio	Annualized return divided by maximum drawdown
Max DD Duration	Longest period (days) spent below a prior equity peak
Recovery Factor	Net profit divided by maximum drawdown
Account Balance	Per-account initial balance + net PnL + deposits - withdrawals, with a tooltip breakdown

Each KPI card can be hidden, and the whole KPI row can be reordered via drag & drop.

14 Interactive Charts

Every chart is interactive: hover for precise values (with time displayed on Cumulative R/PnL, Drawdown, and Running PnL tooltips), click to zoom, drag to pan. All info tooltips (i) show on hover with a dark background. Charts can be expanded to fullscreen.

All line charts use bicolor rendering: blue segments and points when the value is positive, red when negative. This applies to equity curves, running PnL, trade detail PnL, drawdown, and all rolling metrics. Bar charts follow the same convention: blue for positive, red for negative.

Cumulative R / PnL: equity curve over time, bicolor blue/red segments, time in tooltips
Daily P&L: bar chart of net R per trading day (blue positive, red negative)
Daily % of Account: daily PnL as percentage of initial account balance
R by Time of Day: scatter plot showing trade outcomes by entry hour
R by Day of Week: total R per weekday (Mon–Fri only)
Avg PnL by Symbol: average R or PnL per instrument traded
Drawdown Curve: drawdown depth and duration from equity peak, bicolor rendering
R Distribution: histogram of trade outcomes
Win Rate % (10-day rolling): moving average of win rate over a rolling window
MFE vs R: Exit Efficiency: plots final R against MFE to identify money left on the table
MAE vs R: Heat Taken: plots final R against MAE to evaluate stop placement
Running PnL: cumulative net PnL curve, bicolor blue/red, time in tooltips
Rolling Avg R (10/20/50 trades): moving averages over three window sizes
Monte Carlo Simulation: 1,000 reshuffled equity paths with P5–P95 confidence bands

Yearly Heatmap

A GitHub-style contribution grid covering the full calendar year. Each cell represents one trading day, color-coded from deep red (worst days) through neutral gray to blue (best days). Hover over any cell to see the date, net R, and number of trades. Weekends can optionally be hidden. Instantly spot weekly patterns, cold streaks, and your most productive periods.

Monthly Calendar

A traditional calendar view where each day displays its net R, number of trades, and a color indicator. The month header shows Net PnL, total R, win rate, and trade count, and the WK column summarizes each week's P&L, R, and trade count alongside the weekly-notes icon. Every day (including those without trades) shows a pencil icon for session notes, so you can record pre-market plans and post-session reviews on any date. Click any day to navigate to the session detail panel.

The Calendar tab and the Dashboard mini-calendar can optionally show full first/last weeks with adjacent-month days, so the grid never crops a partial week. The Dashboard calendar pane also has its own weekly stats column for at-a-glance weekly P&L without leaving the dashboard.

Hour × Day Heatmap

A grid with hours of the day on one axis and weekdays on the other. Each cell shows the average R for trades entered during that specific hour on that specific day. Blue cells indicate positive average R, red cells indicate negative. Use this to identify your optimal trading windows and the time slots where you consistently underperform.

Checklist Correlation Analysis

A table showing each of your custom checklist items alongside the average R of trades where that item was checked versus unchecked. Reveals which pre-trade habits and conditions actually correlate with profitability, and which ones are noise.

Trades Page

Sortable Trade Table

All trades display in a filterable, sortable table with columns for date, symbol, direction, account, entry price, exit price, R-value, MFE, MAE, duration, strategy, files, and checklist completion. Click any column header to sort. Use the filter bar (date range, symbol, direction, account multi-select, strategy, trade checklist, session checklist) to narrow the view. A Columns menu lets you show/hide every column individually, with preferences persisted per user and horizontal scrolling when overflow occurs. Open trades appear immediately as OPEN rows, so you can take notes and complete checklist items while the position is still live.

Clickable Attachment Badges

A Files column shows minimalist badges per trade: camera count for screenshots, note badge for written notes, and a video badge when a per-trade clip exists. Click the camera to open the screenshot lightbox with keyboard navigation (Esc / ← / →). Video clips open from Trade Detail and play in the shared lightbox with speed controls and Jump-to-entry.

Bulk Actions

Select multiple trades via checkboxes to bulk-assign Account, Strategy, or Notes, bulk-archive (move to "Old trades"), or bulk-delete. Deletes are permanent and protected from re-import by a tombstone mechanism: the NDJSON watcher will never resurrect a deleted trade.

Trade Detail Panel

Click any trade to open its detail panel:

Entry and exit: exact prices, times, and order types
Initial Risk Override: optional manual $ or account-% risk override when the recorded stop is not the intended risk reference
R-value: final risk-adjusted outcome
MFE and MAE: maximum favorable and adverse excursion during the trade
Intra-trade PnL curve: tick-by-tick profit and loss chart reconstructed from Sierra Chart binary SCID files using FIFO lot tracking (see below), rendered with bicolor blue/red segments
Notes: free-text notes attached to the trade
Checklist: trade-specific checklist items with check/uncheck state
Screenshots section: attach, reorder via drag & drop, paste directly from clipboard, and pick the gallery thumbnail (see Gallery below)
Videos section: optional per-trade clips recorded by Video Capture

Every section and individual metric in the trade detail can be hidden from Settings → Show / Hide Trade Detail Sections. The trade detail also supports previous/next navigation with side arrows and the keyboard ← / → keys, scoped to the current Trades table order.

Intra-Trade PnL Curves

Trading Journal reads Sierra Chart's binary SCID tick data files to reconstruct the exact tick-by-tick P&L of each trade. The engine uses FIFO lot tracking to correctly handle scale-ins and partial closes. The result is a precise chart showing exactly how the trade evolved from entry to exit: where it pulled back, where it extended, and how the final exit compares to the best and worst points during the trade.

This is not an approximation from bar data. It uses every recorded tick to produce the highest-resolution P&L curve possible. The detail chart supports $, R, and T (ticks) modes; the chart itself is labelled as gross PnL/R while trade KPI tiles continue to show net values where appropriate.

MFE/MAE values keep source provenance. Sierra Chart study values, SCID recompute values, and optional manual overrides are stored separately, and Trade Detail shows the active source when values diverge. You can review the divergence and promote the SCID value without silently losing the original tracker value.

Optional Post-Exit MFE tracking is forward-only: if it is enabled before a trade closes, the Sierra Chart study can continue watching after exit and report the post-exit peak, trigger reason, and optional screenshot. A trade must be monitored before it closes to receive post-exit data; closed trades cannot be backfilled. The tracker's EOD time uses the Sierra Chart machine's local clock, with no timezone conversion inside the study.

Similar Trade Matching

For any selected trade, the algorithm identifies the top 5 most similar trades in your history. Similarity is computed from four dimensions: symbol match, direction match, time-of-day proximity, and checklist item overlap. Each similar trade is displayed with its R outcome, letting you see how comparable setups have performed historically.

Edge Tracking

An Edge is a named saved filter combination, separate from simple Strategy tags. Define edges in Settings → Rules & Risk Limits → Edge Items by choosing checklist items, session-checklist items, symbols, directions, accounts, and real/missed trade types. The Edge tab then shows each edge as a performance card, and each detail view breaks the same edge across all-time, last-N occurrences, and a custom date range.

Each edge can have its own description and cover image, so you can document the setup visually while keeping Strategy Items lightweight. The Dashboard's Edge Performance pane summarizes current edge performance without forcing you to rebuild filters manually.

In Settings → Rules & Risk Limits → Edge Items, filter dropdowns stay open while you tick multiple boxes, the Session Checklist Items dropdown is organised by set (pick a set, then browse its categories), and the selected-filters summary shows one line per filter. Edge filter summaries list the actual Checklist item names instead of counts, and Edge titles can be clicked directly to rename them.

Video Connector

Video Connector is an optional Windows-only recorder that auto-clips a short video for every trade. It is off by default. When enabled, the journal records your screen continuously in the background with a rolling pre-buffer (default 30 s), then assembles a per-trade MP4 clip when the trade closes. The pre-buffer captures the price action before your entry, and recording continues for a configurable window after the close. Clips attach to the trade automatically, just like screenshots: a 🎬 badge appears in the Trades table and a Videos section in the Trade Detail plays the clip in the lightbox.

Supported modes:

Off: no recorder running (default)
Manual: toggle a clip on and off via the Video Clip button on the Sierra Chart study; when you stop, pick the trade to attach the clip to
Auto on trade: closed trades receive clips automatically after the post-trade buffer is assembled

Bundled ffmpeg, zero setup. The hardware encoder is auto-detected (NVIDIA NVENC, Intel QuickSync, AMD AMF), with a CPU fallback. The recorder can capture the display containing Sierra Chart (default), a fixed display, or all displays. Microphone capture is optional for live voice notes; a silent track is used automatically if the mic is unavailable.

The Enable Video Capture Events ACSIL input lets you disable Video Capture per Sierra Chart study/chart instance, useful when you want only one specific chart to drive trade clips.

The TRADING_JOURNAL study emits UTC epoch timestamps and the chart timezone offset on every NDJSON line, so auto-clips reconcile correctly even when your Sierra Chart charts and Windows are in different timezones (e.g. CME futures shown in Chicago time while Windows runs in Berlin time).

Trade Detail playback uses the shared lightbox with 0.5×–2× speed controls and a Jump-to-entry button. Each clip can be deleted from the Trade Detail with a hover trash icon. A prompt asks whether to detach from the trade only, or also delete the video file from disk. The buffer is retained per active trade, so arbitrarily long trades are fully captured. Configurable clip retention (default 90 days) and a buffer disk cap keep disk use bounded.

Video Connector is driven entirely by the existing NDJSON trade export, so no extra Sierra Chart setup is required beyond having the journal study attached. A diagnostics action in Settings → Video Capture checks ffmpeg, devices, capture scope, encoder fallback, buffer state, and recent capture errors.

Gallery Tab

A brand-new visual view of every trade that has at least one screenshot. Each trade is shown as a card in a responsive grid with the main screenshot on top and key metrics (symbol, direction, net PnL / R, date, contract count, notes preview) below.

Fully Customizable Layout

Cards per row: choose 1 to 6 columns from Settings → Display, the grid adapts instantly
Card image height: set the exact pixel height of the image area (120 to 500 px)
Every topbar filter applies: date range, symbol, direction, account, strategy filters narrow the Gallery the same way they do the Trades tab and Dashboard

Per-Trade Thumbnail with Custom Crop

Trades with multiple screenshots can have one chosen as the gallery thumbnail, and you can frame it precisely. Click the magnifier on any card to open the full lightbox. Click Use as gallery thumbnail to enter crop mode: a resizable / draggable rectangle appears over the image at the exact aspect ratio of your gallery card. Move it, resize it from any corner (aspect locked), and the Gallery card updates live as you drag. Everything auto-saves, with no Save button to click. Click Set as gallery thumbnail to swap which image represents the trade without opening the crop editor.

Card Click Behavior

Click anywhere on a card (outside the magnifier icon) to open the full trade detail overlay, exactly as clicking a row in the Trades tab.

Calendar Page

Session Detail Panel

Click any day on the calendar to open the session detail panel:

Daily statistics: net R, number of trades, win rate, profit factor, and average R for the session
Running PnL chart: cumulative R throughout the trading day, trade by trade, displayed in a larger chart area with smaller trade markers for better readability
Rule violations: any risk management rules broken during the session (see Rules section)
Screenshots: attach, drag & drop, and paste images directly from the clipboard for the active session checklist set
Session notes: free-text notes for end-of-day review, isolated per session checklist set

Click any trade in the session panel to dive into its detail.

Weekly and monthly note buttons let you record broader review comments from the WK column or the month header, independent of daily session notes.

Session Checklist

A separate checklist from the trade-level checklist, designed for session-level habits: pre-market preparation, post-session review, emotional state, etc. Session Checklist items can be organized into named sets, reordered as sets, and filtered through Set → Category → Item navigation. The Diary page shows one global active set at a time, and each session stores notes/screenshots independently per set.

Trade and Session Checklist items can also be numeric gauges instead of simple checkboxes. Gauge items store a 1-to-N value, support lower-is-better scoring, and appear in Trade Detail, Session Detail, and Diary as scored process tags.

Diary Page

The Diary page is the daily-process view for Session Checklist work. Session Checklist visibility on Diary is multi-select (show all sets, no sets, or any subset), so you can focus on a single routine (pre-market, EOD review, instrument-specific checklist) or review several side by side. Calendar session notes and screenshots remain isolated per set.

Screenshots & Clipboard Paste

Screenshots attached to trades or sessions support three input methods:

Drag & drop an image file from Windows Explorer into the drop zone
Click to browse and pick one or multiple image files
Paste from clipboard: a dedicated Click here to paste from clipboard (or press Ctrl+V) zone captures whatever image is in your clipboard and saves it instantly, under the same filename convention as file-picked screenshots. No intermediate "save-to-disk-then-select" step: copy a chart snippet from Sierra Chart, a browser, or any image source, and paste directly

Inside the trade detail, screenshots can be reordered via drag & drop. The new order is persisted, and the Gallery fallback thumbnail follows the first image when no explicit thumbnail is picked.

Missed Trades

Log trades you identified but did not take from the same + button used for manual real trades, choosing Missed in the menu. Missed trades live in the unified Trades workflow and can be shown or hidden with the toolbar Trade Type filter. Each missed trade records the symbol, direction, entry time, theoretical stop and target levels, and a reason for not taking it. The journal calculates what the R outcome would have been, giving you a running total of opportunity cost. Over time, this reveals whether your edge comes from the trades you take or the ones you skip.

Settings split page

The Settings tab is a single split page: Rules & Risk Limits on the left, Settings on the right (50/50 on wide screens, stacked on narrow). Every sub-section is a collapsible dropdown with a count badge and an ⓘ tooltip explaining what it controls. One-click Expand all / Collapse all icons open or close every dropdown in a column.

Rules & Risk Management

Rule Type	Description
Max trades per day	Hard limit on number of trades per session
Max R loss per day	Stop trading after cumulative daily loss exceeds threshold
Max $ loss per day	Dollar-based daily loss limit
Time window	Only allow trades within defined hours (e.g., 9:30–11:30 and 13:00–15:00)

Violations are tracked automatically and displayed on the session detail panel. The dashboard shows violation frequency over time, so you can measure whether your discipline is improving.

Accounts, Strategies, Checklists

Create, rename (pencil icon), delete, and reorder (drag handle) custom Account, Strategy, Trade Checklist, and Session Checklist items. Session Checklist items live inside named sets, and those sets can also be reordered. Compact item rows keep long lists readable without endless scrolling.

Edge Items

Edge Items are managed separately from Strategy Items. An Edge owns the description, cover image, and saved filter definition used for the Edge tab and Dashboard Edge Performance pane. Strategies remain simple tags.

PropFirm Configuration

PropFirm Configuration tracks account-level evaluation rules such as drawdown type, drawdown buffer, optional trailing-to-static lock target, profit target remaining, and manual payout ledger entries. It powers the PropFirm dashboard pane and does not change trade PnL, R-value, or win-rate calculations.

Account cash movements are tracked separately as deposits, withdrawals, and payouts. This lets account-level reporting reflect capital changes without rewriting historical trade records.

Each account can have its own initial balance and a date-only cash ledger. Deposits and withdrawals affect Account Balance but are independent of the toolbar trade date filter; payouts also feed the PropFirm dashboard statistics. The Account Balance KPI tooltip breaks the value down into Initial, Net PnL, Deposits, Withdrawals, and Current.

Per-Account, Per-Symbol Commissions

Every account row has a dedicated blue Commissions button that opens a searchable table where you set commission ($ per round turn) per symbol, for that account specifically. Toggle Use Sierra Chart commissions off in Settings → Commissions to apply your own commission rates instead of the ones SC exports. A Recompute commissions on all existing trades button re-applies the active rules to every imported trade and refreshes the session aggregates.

Trading settings include Break-Even Threshold in $, %, or ticks, optional net-R calculation including commissions, and a Recompute R-values action for applying the current risk settings to existing trades.

Show / Hide (centralized)

One section at the top of Settings groups all visibility toggles:

Toolbar Filters: date range, symbol, direction, account, strategy, trade checklist, session checklist
Tabs: Dashboard, Trades, Gallery, Edge, Calendar, Diary, Settings
KPI Cards: every metric on the dashboard individually
Dashboard Panes: every chart and section
Trade Detail Sections: sections (metrics grid, actions, PnL chart, strategy, checklist, notes, screenshots, videos, similar trades) and individual metrics (Net PnL, Initial Risk, Commission, R-Value, Points, Duration, MFE, MAE, Efficiency, Entry/Exit/Stop, Qty)

Auto-Save

There is no Save Settings button. Every change (font size, commissions, risk mode, toggles, initial balance, always-on-top, gallery cards per row / card height, etc.) is persisted the moment you interact with it. Text inputs save 400 ms after you stop typing; checkboxes and dropdowns save instantly. A small green ✓ Saved indicator confirms each write.

When Default Risk mode is set to fixed ticks, an optional stop auto-fill derives a visible stop price from entry ± risk ticks for newly imported trades that have no stop. This preserves the same initial-risk math as the tick fallback and is mainly a visibility/replay aid.

Settings → Data can also watch Additional Journal Directories for multiple Sierra Chart instances, and Settings → Display includes View on Chart replay style, micro-on-full chart replay, MFE/MAE display format, table density, global font size, and Gallery card layout.

Screenshot Settings

The Sierra Chart study can capture screenshots automatically or from an ACS button. Settings → Screenshot controls:

Auto-screenshot trigger: Off, All Fills, or First and Last Fill
Capture mode: Chart Window, Chartbook, Chartbook Symbol Matching, Main Sierra Chart Window, or Desktop
Manual attachment: attach to the latest trade on the chart symbol or ask each time
Trade triangle size: small, medium, or large chart markers
EOD final screenshot: optional independent screenshot per trade at the configured EOD time

The missing-screenshot diagnostic checks the journal directory, auto folder, matching files, DB references, and per-trade screenshot files so support can identify attachment problems quickly.

Global Font Size

A Global Font Size stepper in Settings → Display scales the entire renderer (topnav, settings, modals, charts, overlays) via Electron's webFrame.setZoomFactor. Default offset is +2 for a slightly larger comfortable baseline.

Monte Carlo Simulation

The Monte Carlo engine takes your actual trade results and reshuffles them 1,000 times to generate simulated equity curves. This answers the question: "Given the trades I've taken, how much of my outcome is skill versus luck?"

The simulation produces:

Median equity curve: the 50th percentile path
P5–P95 confidence band: the range where 90% of simulated outcomes fall
P1 worst case: the 1st percentile outcome
Ruin probability: percentage of simulations that hit a user-defined drawdown threshold
Terminal R distribution: histogram of final cumulative R across all 1,000 simulations

Sierra Chart Integration

Works Hand-in-Hand with Trade Manager

Trading Journal is designed to work seamlessly with the Trade Manager study. When you enter a position via Trade Manager, the stop loss level you drew on the chart is automatically captured and passed to the journal, so each imported trade arrives with its exact risk reference already filled in. The result: R-values, MFE, and MAE are computed automatically, with zero manual data entry. Just trade with Trade Manager, and your journal fills itself.

Automatic Import

Trading Journal watches your configured journal folder and automatically imports new trades every 5 seconds. Open trades can appear as OPEN rows before the exit is received, then reconcile into the closed trade when the final fill arrives. Deleted trades are protected by a tombstone table. Once you delete a trade (single or bulk), the import engine will never silently re-add it, even if the source NDJSON file still contains the row.

Multi-Account Support

All import paths track the originating account. The toolbar has a multi-select account checklist to filter the Dashboard, Trades, Gallery, and Calendar by any combination of accounts simultaneously. New accounts discovered during an import are automatically added to the active filter selection so nothing disappears silently.

Import Methods

Method	Description
Automatic (NDJSON)	The Sierra Chart study writes NDJSON files that the journal imports automatically every 5 seconds
Manual (SC TradesList)	Data → Import SC TradesList… imports a .txt file exported from Sierra Chart's Trade Activity Log
Re-import Last TradesList	The ⟳ button in the Data menu repeats the last manual import without reopening the file picker
Auto-import TradesList on change	Watch the last imported TradesList file and re-import it when Sierra Chart overwrites it

Users running multiple Sierra Chart instances can configure Additional Journal Directories. Each folder is watched in parallel with the primary Journal Directory.

Manual Import

Manual TradesList import supports both Sierra Chart export modes:

Trades: flat-to-flat trade groups (one row per round-trip trade)
Fills: individual fill records (the journal reconstructs trades from raw fills)

Three Sierra Chart symbol naming conventions are recognized automatically:

Convention	Example	Description
Teton	ESH26_FUT_CME	Full contract with exchange suffix
Rithmic dot	ESM6.CME	Short contract with dot-separated exchange
Rithmic dash	ES-202506	Symbol with year-month suffix

Micro contracts (MES, MNQ, etc.) are auto-detected based on tick value, so the correct instrument definition is applied regardless of naming convention. Multi-account exports are parsed robustly: if a flat-to-flat group boundary marker is missing at an account transition, the parser flushes the previous account's trades under its own account before starting the next.

Auto-importing the last TradesList file is duplicate-safe and is the recommended workaround for order-allocation sibling accounts that are not streamed by their own chart-hosted TRADING_JOURNAL study.

SCID Tick Data

Trading Journal reads Sierra Chart's binary SCID files directly to reconstruct intra-trade PnL curves at tick resolution. Point the journal to your Sierra Chart data folder and it automatically locates the correct SCID file for each trade's symbol. MFE/MAE values can come from the SC study's tick-by-tick tracker or from an explicit SCID recompute; the active source is tracked instead of being silently overwritten.

One-Click Chart Replay

From any trade detail panel, click the replay button to open Sierra Chart at the exact date and time of the trade entry, with fill markers showing your entry and exit points. Review the price action around your trade without manually scrolling through charts.

When the chart is frozen by View on Chart, a persistent Back to Live pill appears in the journal's top bar so you can return Sierra Chart to live data even after switching tabs or restarting the app.

License & Offline Use

The current license system uses server-issued signed tokens stored locally in encrypted, hardware-bound storage. Activation is online. After activation, lifetime licenses validate locally and are designed for offline use; subscription licenses refresh periodically and include a grace period if refresh temporarily fails.

Lifetime users can use Release this device in Settings → License to free one activation slot before moving to another computer.

Activations include silent server-side recovery for users whose local license data becomes unreadable (antivirus quarantine, disk error). Background re-verification runs once per day, so revoked or expired licenses take effect within 24 hours even on long-running sessions. A 48-hour offline grace period with a clear banner keeps the app fully usable while you reconnect. Settings → License shows a contextual action button for every state (Activate, Re-enter key, Manage subscription, Release device, Retry recovery) plus a Diagnostic info section useful when contacting support.

The Windows installer is SHA256 Authenticode-signed by SSL.com (publisher: SCStudies), so auto-updates apply cleanly without Windows SmartScreen friction.

Display Mode Toggle

A "SWITCH TO R" / "SWITCH TO $" toggle button switches the entire journal between two display modes:

R-value mode: all metrics, charts, and tables display risk multiples (e.g., +2.3R, -0.8R)
Dollar mode: all metrics, charts, and tables display dollar amounts (e.g., +$460, -$160)

The toggle applies everywhere simultaneously: dashboard KPIs, equity curve axis, trade table columns, session stats, Monte Carlo projections, and Gallery cards.

Updates & "What's New" Popup

The journal ships with electron-updater, so new versions are downloaded and installed automatically in the background. After any update (or when you catch up across multiple versions at once), a What's New popup lists every Added / Changed / Fixed entry for every release between the last one you saw and the new one, stacked newest-first in a single view, never only the latest release's notes.

Version status, Check for updates, restart-to-install, and the full changelog live in Settings → Update. The changelog can be expanded into a centered modal for easier reading. The top menu groups file-oriented actions under Data: Import SC TradesList…, the ⟳ quick re-import button, Sync Sierra Chart trades, and Export Trades to CSV….

Supported Instruments

Index Futures

Standard	Micro	Tick Size	Tick Value
ES	MES	0.25	$12.50 / $1.25
NQ	MNQ	0.25	$5.00 / $0.50
YM	MYM	1.00	$5.00 / $0.50
RTY	M2K	0.10	$5.00 / $0.50

Energy

Standard	Micro	Tick Size	Tick Value
CL	MCL	0.01	$10.00 / $1.00

Metals

Standard	Micro	Tick Size	Tick Value
GC	MGC	0.10	$10.00 / $1.00

Bonds

ZB, UB, TN, ZN, ZF, ZT

Currencies

6E, M6E, 6J, 6B, M6B, 6A, M6A, 6C, 6S, 6N, 6M

Grains

ZS, ZW, ZC, ZM, ZL

Meat

LE, HE, GF

Softs

SB, KC, CC, CT, OJ

Crypto

BTC, MBT, ETH, MET

Custom symbols can be added manually with user-defined tick size and tick value.

Export

CSV Export

Export your filtered trade list as a CSV file. All columns from the trade table are included: date, symbol, direction, entry, exit, R-value, MFE, MAE, duration, account, strategy, and checklist items.

PDF Export

Generate a PDF report of the full dashboard including all 14 charts, the yearly heatmap, KPI summary, and checklist correlation table. Suitable for sharing with mentors, prop firms, or for your own records.

Requirements

Windows 10 or later
Sierra Chart (for automatic import and SCID tick data)
Internet required for license activation and auto-updates; all trade data is stored locally, never sent to any server

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Feature	SCS Journal	Tradezella	TraderSync	Edgewonk
Continuous per-trade video recording
Native Sierra Chart streaming (NDJSON)