Automated trading journal for Sierra Chart — track, analyze, and improve every trade
$13/mo
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Sharpe, Sortino, Calmar, Profit Factor, MFE/MAE, rolling averages, and more — all interactive with R-value and dollar toggle.
Automatic trade import, SCID tick data for intra-trade PnL curves, and one-click chart replay at exact entry time.
1,000 reshuffles of your trade sequence showing P5–P95 band, ruin probability, and worst-case scenario.
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, and runs entirely on your machine with a local SQLite database. No cloud, no subscriptions to external platforms, no data sharing.
The main dashboard provides a complete statistical overview of your trading performance across any filtered date range, symbol, direction, or checklist combination.
| Metric | Description |
|---|---|
| Total R | Cumulative risk-adjusted return across all trades |
| Win Rate | Percentage of trades closed with positive R |
| Profit Factor | Gross profit divided by gross loss |
| Expectancy | Average R per trade — what you expect to gain per unit of risk |
| Sharpe Ratio | Risk-adjusted return relative to volatility of returns |
| Sortino Ratio | Like Sharpe, but only penalizes downside volatility |
| Calmar Ratio | Annualized return divided by maximum drawdown |
| Recovery Factor | Net profit divided by maximum drawdown |
| Max Drawdown | Largest peak-to-trough decline in cumulative R |
| Max Drawdown Duration | Longest period spent below a prior equity peak |
| Average Win | Mean R-value of winning trades |
| Average Loss | Mean R-value of losing trades |
| Largest Win | Single best trade by R-value |
| Largest Loss | Single worst trade by R-value |
| Average Trade Duration | Mean time in position across all trades |
| Total Trades | Number of closed trades in the selected period |
| Long Win Rate | Win rate for long trades only |
| Short Win Rate | Win rate for short trades only |
| Consecutive Wins/Losses | Longest streak of consecutive winners and losers |
Every chart is interactive — hover for precise values, click to zoom, drag to pan.
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 bright green (best days). Hover over any cell to see the date, net R, and number of trades. Instantly spot weekly patterns, cold streaks, and your most productive periods.
A traditional calendar view where each day displays its net R, number of trades, and a color indicator. Click any day to navigate to the session detail panel for that date.
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. Use this to identify your optimal trading windows and the time slots where you consistently underperform.
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.
All trades displayed in a filterable, sortable table with columns for date, symbol, direction, entry price, exit price, R-value, MFE, MAE, duration, and checklist completion. Click any column header to sort. Use the filter bar to narrow by symbol, direction, date range, or minimum/maximum R.
Click any trade to open its detail panel:
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.
Select any two trades to open a side-by-side comparison view. Both trades are displayed with their metrics (R, MFE, MAE, duration) in parallel columns, and their intra-trade PnL curves overlaid on the same time axis. Useful for reviewing similar setups that produced different outcomes.
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.
Click any day on the calendar to open the session detail panel:
A separate checklist from the trade-level checklist, designed for session-level habits: pre-market preparation, post-session review, emotional state, etc. Each session can have its checklist items checked or unchecked independently.
Log trades you identified but did not take. Each missed trade records the symbol, direction, entry time, the 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.
Define trading rules with automatic violation detection:
| 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.
Custom checklist items that appear on every trade. Examples: "Setup matches playbook", "Volume confirms direction", "No news in next 30 minutes". Check or uncheck items for each trade individually.
Custom checklist items that appear on every trading session. Examples: "Reviewed overnight levels", "Set daily loss limit", "Completed post-session review".
Both trade and session checklists feed into the correlation analysis on the dashboard. For each checklist item, the journal calculates:
This transforms your checklists from a qualitative exercise into a quantitative tool — you can see exactly which habits and conditions are associated with better trading outcomes.
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:
Trading Journal watches your configured journal folder and automatically imports new trades every 5 seconds. No manual export/import step required — close a trade in Sierra Chart, and it appears in the journal within seconds.
| Format | Source | Description |
|---|---|---|
| SC TradesList | Sierra Chart native | Direct import from Sierra Chart's TradesList export |
| CSV | TradesViz or custom | Standard CSV format compatible with TradesViz exports |
| NDJSON | Live feed | Newline-delimited JSON for real-time streaming from custom tools |
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.
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.
A global toggle switches the entire journal between two display modes:
The toggle applies everywhere simultaneously — dashboard KPIs, equity curve axis, trade table columns, session stats, and Monte Carlo projections.
| 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 |
| CL | MCL | 0.01 | $10.00 / $1.00 |
| GC | MGC | 0.10 | $10.00 / $1.00 |
Custom symbols can be added manually with user-defined tick size and tick value.
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, and checklist items.
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.