SCS Trading Journal

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.

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Dashboard

The main dashboard provides a complete statistical overview of your trading performance across any filtered date range, symbol, direction, account, or checklist combination. The layout is fully customizable: click "Edit Layout" 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.

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	Current account value (when initial balance is set)

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.

1. Cumulative R / PnL — equity curve over time, bicolor blue/red segments, time in tooltips
2. Daily P&L — bar chart of net R per trading day (blue positive, red negative)
3. Daily % of Account — daily PnL as percentage of initial account balance
4. R by Time of Day — scatter plot showing trade outcomes by entry hour
5. R by Day of Week — total R per weekday (Mon–Fri only)
6. Avg PnL by Symbol — average R or PnL per instrument traded
7. Drawdown Curve — drawdown depth and duration from equity peak, bicolor rendering
8. R Distribution — histogram of trade outcomes
9. Win Rate % (10-day rolling) — moving average of win rate over a rolling window
10. MFE vs R — Exit Efficiency — plots final R against MFE to identify money left on the table
11. MAE vs R — Heat Taken — plots final R against MAE to evaluate stop placement
12. Running PnL — cumulative net PnL curve, bicolor blue/red, time in tooltips
13. Rolling Avg R (10/20/50 trades) — moving averages over three window sizes
14. 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. 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.

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.

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Trades Page

Sortable Trade Table

All trades displayed in a filterable, sortable table with columns for date, symbol, direction, entry price, exit price, R-value, MFE, MAE, duration, account, strategy, and checklist completion. Click any column header to sort. Use the filter bar (date range, symbol, direction, account multi-select, strategy) 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.

Clickable Attachment Badges

A new Files column shows two minimalist icons per trade: a blue camera (with count bubble) for screenshots, and a red document icon for notes. Click the camera to open the screenshot lightbox with keyboard navigation (Esc / ← / →). Click the note icon to read the trade's notes in a dedicated preview card. Both badges refresh live when you add or edit attachments inside the detail panel.

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
• 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)

Every section and individual metric in the trade detail can be hidden from Settings → Show / Hide Trade Detail Sections.

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.

Trade Comparison

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.

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.

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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 — 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.

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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 session
• Session notes — free-text notes for end-of-day review

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

Session Checklist

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.

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Screenshots & Clipboard Paste

Screenshots attached to trades or sessions support three input methods:

1. Drag & drop an image file from Windows Explorer into the drop zone
2. Click to browse and pick one or multiple image files
3. 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.

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Missed Trades

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.

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Rules & Settings (merged page)

Rules & Settings now live on 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. Compact item rows keep long lists readable without endless scrolling.

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.

Show / Hide (centralized)

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

• Toolbar Filters — date range, symbol, direction, account, strategy
• Tabs — Dashboard, Trades, Gallery, Calendar, Missed, 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, 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.

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.

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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

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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. 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 — 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.

Two Import Methods

Method	Description
Automatic (NDJSON)	The Sierra Chart study writes NDJSON files that the journal imports automatically every 5 seconds
Manual (SC TradesList)	Import a .txt file exported from Sierra Chart's Trade Activity Log

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.

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. The MFE/MAE values come from the SC study's tick-by-tick measurement during execution — never recomputed by the renderer from reduced curves.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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