Options trading journal

What to log on every trade

Start with the basics — date, symbol, side, size, entry, exit, fees and result. Then add the fields that are specific to this style: strategy, strike, expiry, days to expiry and implied volatility at entry. Those extra columns are what let you filter later and answer a real question instead of staring at a total.

The metric that matters most

For this style it is profit factor per strategy type. Everything else is context. Review it weekly over a rolling sample rather than daily, because a single session is noise no matter how strongly it felt otherwise.

The mistake this group makes

The recurring failure is judging a spread by premium collected instead of risk taken. Tag those trades separately for one month and compare their expectancy with the rest of your sample. In almost every journal, that subset is the difference between a flat year and a good one.

Importing from thinkorswim, tastytrade and Interactive Brokers

Export your trade history and drop the file into the importer. TradeStack fingerprints the header row, so files from thinkorswim, tastytrade and Interactive Brokers are recognised without mapping columns by hand. Imported trades stay fully editable, so you can add notes, screenshots and playbook tags afterwards.

Frequently asked

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