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Daily Trading Journal

The story behind your P&L. Each session gets one structured entry — your state, plan, and checklist before the open; your mood, reflection, and whether you followed the plan after the close; plus market notes, tags, and screenshots. Patterns then lines it all up against your results.

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Free · Private · Every session, captured

The Whole Day in One Entry

Each entry follows the shape of a trading day. Before the open: your state, your plan, and your checklist. After the close: your mood, your reflection, and whether you followed the plan. The day itself: free-form market notes, tags, and screenshots. Write with bold and lists or in plain text, and start any field from a template.

Tag entries by ticker or setup — tags you already use in the Trade Log are suggested as you type — then filter the journal down to those days, and read each tag’s green and red days and net P&L in the Tags strip.

Before the Open: State, Plan, Checklist

Start with a five-point read on how you’re coming in — Drained, Foggy, Steady, Sharp, or Locked in. It’s logged before the session, so the result can’t color it, and it’s kept apart from the mood you log after the close.

Then write the plan and tick your checklist — your own pre-session routine, the same list every day. Add an item on its last line, drag to reorder, rename an item where it stands, and undo a removal. The panel counts what you ticked, and a template of your own can bring checklist items along with it.

After the Close: Did You Follow the Plan?

Log the mood the session left you in, from Awful to Great, and write the reflection — what went well, what went wrong, the rule for next time. The Post-close review template lays out the prompts.

Then answer one question — Followed plan? Yes, Partly, or No. Every entry in your diary shows the day’s arc from state to mood beside its plan result, and the list filters down to the days you went off plan.

Templates of Your Own

Plan, Notes and Reflection each have a Template menu. Plan and Reflection come with built-in starters, and every field takes templates of your own: open Manage templates… and save up to twenty, each with a label, the text to insert, and, if you like, checklist items that come along with it.

Picking a template adds it below what you’ve already written, and its checklist items are added to your checklist, unticked, skipping any already on it. A Monday prep that brings the Monday routine, an earnings-week plan with its extra checks — set up once, a click away every morning.

Some Days Need More Than Words

A note about a setup is only half the story — what you were looking at is the other half. Drag an image in, browse for a file, or paste straight from your clipboard the moment you grab a screenshot. Pin up to five per entry — what you planned from, how you managed it, how it played out, and the wider context around it. Click any screenshot to open it full-screen. Give each one a caption, so a screenshot from three months ago still says what it was showing.

Surfaced Right on Your Calendar

Every journaled day is flagged on your P&L calendar with a small marker, so the days you wrote something stand out from the days you didn't. The qualitative context sits one glance away from the green-and-red of your results.

No separate place to check, no second habit to maintain — your notes live exactly where you already review your trading.

Open a Day, See the Why

Click into any day and your journal opens beside that day's numbers — the daily total, the trade count, your mood, and everything you wrote. The P&L tells you what happened; the entry tells you why.

It's the same editor everywhere, so a thought you start from the calendar is the same entry you'll find later in your diary.

Patterns: Your Journal Against Your P&L

Once ten trading days in the last 12 months carry an entry, Patterns groups those days by what you logged — your state before the open, your mood after the close, your answer to “Followed plan?”, and how much of the checklist you ticked — and charts the net P&L of each group.

Hover a bar for its average per day and the share of green days. Two more reads close the loop: journaled days against the ones you skipped, and the state and mood you logged the day after a red or a green day.

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No credit card required. Give every trading day the context your P&L can't.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What can I capture in a daily journal entry?
Each trading day gets one structured entry in three parts. Before the open: your state, a Plan, and your pre-session checklist. After the close: your mood, a Reflection, and whether you followed the plan. For the day itself: free-form market notes, tags, and up to five screenshots. Entries are keyed to the calendar date — so the day you traded is the day you wrote about.
What's the difference between Plan and Reflection?
Plan is your pre-market intent — bias, key levels, the names on your watchlist, and the risk you'll allow. Reflection is your post-close review — what worked, what didn't, and the lesson for next time. Splitting the day into the two halves keeps your intent honest against the outcome, instead of letting you rewrite the story after the fact — and “Followed plan?” records the verdict: Yes, Partly, or No.
How does the pre-session checklist work?
It’s your own routine — the steps you want done before the first order, like setting a market bias or marking key levels. Start from four suggested items or write your own, then tick them each day in the Before the open panel. It’s one list for every day and every account: add, reorder, rename, or remove items right where they stand, and bring a removed one back with Undo. Patterns charts net P&L by how much of the list you completed, measured against the list as it stands today.
Can I create my own journal templates?
Yes. Plan, Notes and Reflection each have a Template menu, and Manage templates… saves up to twenty of your own — each with a label, the text to insert, and optional checklist items. Inserting a template adds it below what you’ve already written, and its checklist items are added to your checklist, unticked, skipping any already on it.
Can I attach screenshots to an entry?
Yes — up to five per entry. Drag an image onto the entry, browse for a file, or paste a screenshot straight from your clipboard the moment you grab it. Enough room for the natural rhythm of a trade — the setup you planned from, how you managed it, and how it actually resolved — with a couple of slots to spare for the wider context. Screenshots stay pinned to that day, and clicking one opens a full-screen view.
How does the journal connect to my P&L calendar?
Every journaled day is marked on the P&L calendar, so the days you wrote something stand out from the days you didn't. Click into any day and your entry opens beside that day's numbers — the daily total, the trade count, and your mood — so the context and the result sit side by side. The P&L tells you what happened; the journal tells you why. The entry also appears in the Trade Log review pane, beside any trade you filled that day.
Can I search and filter my past entries?
Yes. Your entries collect into a running diary you can search by text and filter by mood, by plan result, and by tag — so “every day I went off plan” or “everything tagged earnings” is a couple of clicks away. A streak counter tracks how consistently you're journaling.
What are the state and mood ratings for?
Two quick five-point reads that need no writing. State — from Drained to Locked in — is how you came into the session, logged before the open. Mood — from Awful to Great — is how it left you, logged after the close. Both feed the journal’s Patterns section: once ten trading days are journaled, you see net P&L by state, by mood, by whether you followed your plan, and by checklist completion.
Is the journal free, and is my data private?
The journal is part of TickerScribe and free to use — no separate tier. Your entries and screenshots are private to your account — only ever visible to you, never publicly accessible.

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