This trading journal spreadsheet measures the way you trade. Log each trade once - entry, exit, fees and the stop you planned - and the workbook works out the rest: net P&L, the R-multiple, your expectancy and profit factor, an equity curve and a drawdown that deposits and withdrawals can’t distort. Then it slices every closed trade by setup, symbol, weekday and side, and puts a dollar figure on each mistake you tag.
A plain trade log tells you what happened. It does not tell you whether a setup pays over many trades, whether Thursdays cost you money, or what moving your stop has cost this year. Those are the questions a journal is kept to answer, and they are the ones this workbook calculates.
Every trade measured in R
On the Trade Log you type the cream input columns: date and time in and out, symbol, asset class, side, quantity, entry and exit price, fees, planned stop, target, setup and mistake. The teal calculated columns fill themselves in: the multiplier for the instrument, gross and net P&L, the risk you planned in dollars, the R-multiple (net P&L divided by that risk), planned reward-to-risk, hold time and hold type, weekday, month, the result, your running account equity and the drawdown.
R is what makes a small trade and a large one comparable. Write the stop down before you enter, and every result reads in the same unit. The log holds 2,000 rows, and every total covers all 2,000 of them, so a new trade is never missed by a formula.
Expectancy, profit factor and drawdown on one Dashboard
The Dashboard rolls every closed trade up: closed trades, win rate, average win and average loss, payoff ratio, expectancy per trade in dollars and in R, profit factor, net trading P&L, fees paid, max drawdown in dollars and percent, and the longest losing streak, counted in the order trades closed. Expectancy is your total net P&L divided by your closed trades - what an average trade has made you - and profit factor is gross wins divided by gross losses, so anything above 1 means the winners outweigh the losers. Three plain-English lines under the cards name your best setup, your weakest setup and your costliest mistake.
Three charts sit under them: account equity against the money you put in, expectancy per trade by rated setup, and net P&L by month.
Which setups actually pay
Edge Finder slices your trades six ways - by setup, asset class, weekday, side, hold type and symbol. Each row shows trades, win rate, average win and loss, expectancy in dollars and R, profit factor and net P&L, with a verdict: positive expectancy, negative expectancy, too few trades below a minimum you set, or Mixed when the R and the dollars disagree - usually a sign that position size, not the setup, is doing the damage.
What each mistake really cost
Tag a trade with the mistake you made: moved my stop, oversized, FOMO entry, revenge trade, cut a winner early, and so on (8 tags to start, all renamable). Mistake Cost compares each tag’s trades with your clean trades - the ones with no mistake - and ranks the tags by what they cost against that baseline, costliest first, in dollars and in R.
Deposits never count as gains
Deposits and withdrawals go on the Cash Flows tab. Account equity includes them, but the drawdown is measured on trading P&L alone, so adding cash never looks like a winning month and taking some out never looks like a losing one.
A review, not a decoration
The Monthly Review lays twelve months side by side: trades, net P&L, total R, win rate, profit factor, best and weakest setup, the top-cost mistake measured against that month’s clean trades, and month-end equity, with columns for what went right or wrong and one rule for next month. Six written prompts underneath walk you through it in about twenty minutes.
Stocks, options, futures, crypto and forex in one log
A starter instrument table on Settings prices each symbol correctly: shares at one, standard equity options at ×100, and 16 futures contracts with their point values filled in from the exchanges’ published contract specifications (check them against your broker’s). Crypto and USD-quoted forex pairs work too. Add any symbol you trade, and rename the 8 setup tags to your own.
What it does not do
It gives no trade signals and no investment, tax or financial advice. It connects to no broker, imports nothing automatically and stores no credentials - you type each trade, or paste it from your broker’s export into the cream columns. It does not convert currencies, so forex pairs must be quoted in US dollars. The sample trades and tickers in the workbook are invented, so the numbers on the images are illustrations, not results. To start your own journal, select the cream input cells of the sample rows - Trade Log columns A-N and Cash Flows columns A-D - and press Delete. Never delete whole rows, because the calculated columns hold the formulas. Then replace the sample tickers and tags on Settings with your own. The Start Here guide walks through it.
Try the free version first
Want to see what measuring a trade in R feels like before you buy? The free trading journal and trade log is one Trade Log tab for stocks and options: type each trade and its planned stop, and it works out net P&L after fees, planned risk, the R-multiple and a running win rate. It opens on the stock and option trades from this workbook’s own invented sample. No email, no signup.
It stops at one trade at a time. The full workbook adds futures, crypto and forex in the same log, the Dashboard, Edge Finder, Mistake Cost, Cash Flows and Monthly Review tabs, and 2,000 rows.
Own it, don’t rent it
Many trade-journaling apps sell this kind of analysis as a monthly subscription. This is a file you keep: no account, no yearly fee, and nothing that stops working when you stop paying. It opens in Excel (the core rollups avoid dynamic arrays, so Excel 2019 works), in LibreOffice, and as a native Google Sheet through a one-click copy link to a Sheet that is already built, so there is nothing to import.
The download also includes a 17-page Start Here guide that explains every number, and 7 printable pages: a pre-trade plan, a paper trade log, a monthly review worksheet and the futures point-value table.
