Best Trading Journals for 2025

A trading journal is a running log that notes what you traded, when you traded, why you traded, and how much money you made or lost on each trade. Over time, a journal will reveal your trading strengths and weaknesses. Online journal apps aren’t mandatory, but they can automate most of the process and provide unique insights you might not come up with on your own.

Trading journals provide you with an easy way to figure out what went right and what went wrong, and look back at your trade history. There is simply no better way to improve over time. Technical analysts have been using stock trading journals for decades.

Reviewing the film is a critical part of professional sports, and investing is no different. Taking a screenshot of the stock chart after the trade is completed, plotting buy and sell points, writing down your notes recapping the trade, and tweaking trade rules thereafter all fall under the post-trade analysis.

If you take the time to conduct post-trade analysis, you can improve your success rate and ultimately make more money from your investing. To do so, I suggest following these steps:

1. Log the trade details - This includes the ticker symbol, trade date, buy price $, total shares, sell price $, return $, return % (at a minimum). Other great data points to track include stop price, risk, and commission spend, if you’re paying commissions.
2. Download a stock chart and mark it up - Mark it up with your buy and sell points alongside any trendlines, support, resistance, etc. Then, mark this chart with the trade info and archive it. Some trading journals allow you to save screenshots with your trade. That’s great if you take the time to do it.
3. Write your trade notes - Either on the chart itself, in your Excel journal, or on paper, write down what you did right and wrong and recap the reasoning behind the trade.
4. Reflect back on trade data, chart, notes - This is the true "reviewing the film" exercise; identify potential bad habits, make rule tweaks, identify areas for improvement, and overall set the focus for the next trade.
5. Archive for later use - Once you have reviewed the trade from start to finish and gone through the motions of a proper recap, save your trading journal entry.

Recommended variables

What variables do successful traders use when logging trades in their trading journal? Here are 11 to always include:

1. Stop Price $ - The Stop Loss price ($) which can be a physical stop loss order or a mental stop. Cutting your losses short is one of many crucial keys to successful investing.
2. Strategy - Always tag each trade with the strategy used.
3. Risk $ - This is the amount of capital being risked on the trade. So, if you buy 100 shares at $100, and your Stop is at $99, then you are effectively risking $100 on the trade. Risk can also be expressed as an "R" multiple (Van Tharp principle), and is a concept that has truly changed the way I approach trading.
4. Risk % - The percent of capital risked on the trade. Referencing the previous example, the total risk would be 1% ($10,000 invested / $100 being risked).
5. Target Price $ - Back to our example of buying long at $100, if we set our target price at $110, that means our goal is to hold the stock until it reaches at least $110. Once we reach our initial target price, we can check back in and consider trimming our position to take some profits, sell the entire position, or hold the position and set a new, higher price target.
6. Return $ - The number everyone loves to see, which hopefully is a profit and not a loss. If our 100 shares of stock we bought at $100 reaches our $110 target price and we sell our full position to lock in profits, then we would realize a return of +$1,000 ($10 per share x 100 shares).
7. Return % - The dollar return converted into a percentage. Sticking with our example, selling at $110 would yield a +10% return ($1,000 / $10,000).
8. Return "R" - Applying R multiples, we convert the Return $ into "R". Using this same example, if we had risked $100 (1R), and made $1,000, then our return would be +10R.
9. Mistake? - Did you make a mistake or break a rule with this trade? If yes, then you mark the trade as a mistake. Mistake tracking is one of the more underused, yet very powerful variables. By logging mistakes, you force yourself to replay the trade in your mind and reflect back on what went right and/or wrong.
10. Notes - Not necessarily a variable, but writing notes when reflecting on the trade is important to help you learn from each trade. What went right, what didn't, what you were thinking when buying, selling, and so on are all examples of what can be journaled.
11. Risk/Reward Ratio - The risk-reward ratio measures how much your potential reward is for each dollar you risk on the trade. Using the same long 100 shares at $100 trade example, with $99 as our stop and $110 as our target, our risk/reward ratio would be 1:10. As long as the trade works out at least once every 10 tries, we will still make money (excluding trade costs).

Yes, by tagging each trade you can assess performance over time and identify whether or not the strategy you are using is successful. Tagging your trades means marking the strategy you used to make the trade.

Any good trading journal will allow you to filter performance by tag to view your biggest winners and losers. By looking back every so often, you can identify areas of improvement and tweak your trade rules for that strategy.

Here are a few tips for success that I’ve learned over the years when building a trading strategy:

• Have clear rules for each strategy - Consider having preset profit targets, objectives and position management rules, and make sure to tag each trade!
• Use numerical identifiers - Start your seed strategy with "1.0" and refresh the tags each time you adjust your rules so you can accurately track performance. You can progress to "1.1" or "2.0", etc. You'll be amazed when you compare the trades and performance of each iteration.
• Challenge yourself to improve across the board - Don't just analyze the net return of each strategy iteration. Look also at mistake %, time committed overall, trade frequency, and your overall emotions to assess true success. For example, day trading requires far more trades, time, and stress than buying and holding long.

In his book Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom, Van Tharp advocates finding the right strategy for you. The more you test different strategies and learn about yourself, the more successful you will be over time. I learned that, for me, day trading just isn't the right fit.

Here are my recommendations for the best trading journals based on how you trade:

Best trading journal for day trading: TraderSync

If you’re an active day trader who logs dozens of trades a day across multiple accounts or brokers, TraderSync’s sleek dashboard and deep import functionality (700+ brokers) is worth the premium. It also includes a paper trading simulator to stress test strategies in fast-moving markets.

Best trading journal for options trading: TradesViz

TradesViz lets you visualize complex multi-leg options positions with precise entry/exit charting and detailed P&L breakdowns by leg. It’s one of the few journals where options traders can analyze strategy-level outcomes at scale.

Best trading journal for stock trading: Chartlog

Chartlog’s clean interface and quick broker sync make it perfect for active equity traders. You can run strategy-based filters and visualize equity curves, which makes it easy to assess your progress over time.

Best trading journal for forex trading: Edgewonk

Edgewonk has deep support for MetaTrader 4 and international brokers, plus multi-currency performance tracking. Its return forecaster and mistake tagging are especially useful for forex traders managing high-frequency trades across pairs.

Best trading journal for futures trading: TradesViz

For futures, TradesViz strikes the right balance between automation and analysis. It supports futures, options on futures, and overlays powerful custom charting tools to dissect each trade.

Stonk Journal is hands-down the best free trading journal right now. While most free trading journals are nothing more than an Excel spreadsheet, Stonk Journal offers an actual platform to track your trades, visualize your performance, and receive insights. It’s far more visually impressive and helpful.

Stonk Journal doesn’t support trade imports, but you can log your trades manually with full customization, including entry notes, confidence levels, and screenshots. It’s donation-based, so if you like it, consider supporting the creator. I donated $15 because it was worth it for what it offers. Great pick for beginners and casual traders who don’t need automation.

TraderSync is the best trading journal app, partly because it's one of the few major trading journals that offers an app. You can download the TraderSync app on both Android and Apple devices. The TraderSync app also gives you access to many of the same functions that make TraderSync such a high-quality trading journal: detailed information about past trades, performance reports, and access to the AI assistant.

While most other top trading journals are only available on a desktop computer, TraderSync has taken the step to meet its mobile users where they are.