Guides
Trading journal template for Excel and Google Sheets, and how to keep one
Download a trade journal template — a plain CSV that opens in Excel, Google Sheets and Notion. It has three example trades and columns the Trading OS online journal recognizes on its own, if you ever want to move your journal there.
14 columns, 3 example rows. Comma-separated, UTF-8.
R formula for Excel and Google Sheets
=(G2-F2)/(F2-H2)Trade result in R: (exit − entry) ÷ (entry − stop). One formula for buys and sells. G is Close Price, F is Open Price, H is Stop Loss.
Template columns
- Symbol
- the instrument: EURUSD, BTCUSD, XAUUSD
- Direction
- buy or sell
- Volume
- size: lots, coins or contracts
- Open Time / Close Time
- entry and exit time, YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss
- Open Price / Close Price
- entry and exit price
- Stop Loss / Take Profit
- the stop and target set at entry
- Commission / Swap
- commission and swap in account currency
- Profit
- the trade result in account currency
- Position ID
- the broker's trade number — so imports don't duplicate
- Reason
- how it closed: tp, sl, manual
What to log in a trading journal
At minimum, whatever the result is computed from: instrument, direction, size, entry and exit time and price, stop and target, commission and the result. Without the stop you can't compute R — the result in units of risk that lets trades on different account sizes compare honestly.
Numbers alone won't tell you why you lose. Next to them, log the setup, the reason for entry, your state (calm, tilt, FOMO) and the mistake, if there was one. What to review in those notes is covered in the trading journal checklist.
How to keep a journal that actually works
Log each trade right after the exit, while you still remember why you took it. Don't delete or “forget” the losers — a journal without them describes a trader who doesn't exist. Name setups the same way every time, or you'll never be able to gather stats on them.
Once a week, compute win rate, average R and expectancy from the journal — separately for each setup. A reasonable bar is 30 trades per setup before drawing conclusions; your best ten in a row don't count.
When a spreadsheet stops being enough
A spreadsheet doesn't pull trades from the exchange, doesn't price each mistake, and can't see how far price went against you inside a trade. At a hundred trades, manual entry and formulas start eating more time than the review itself.
The Trading OS online journal imports this same CSV — it recognizes the template's columns with no manual mapping — as well as Binance, Bybit and OKX exports. There's a free plan, and the journal works right in your browser without sign-up.
Frequently asked questions
- Excel, Google Sheets or Notion?
- Any of them: the template is a plain CSV. Excel and Google Sheets open it directly, and Notion can import it as a database. Pick whatever you'll actually fill in right after a trade.
- How many trades do I need before drawing conclusions?
- A reasonable bar is 30 trades per setup. With fewer, one lucky streak easily passes for an edge.
- Can I move my journal to the online journal later?
- Yes. Save the sheet as CSV with the same column headers and upload it through file import in the Trading OS journal — the columns map themselves.
A journal that does the math itself
Import the template or an exchange export into the Trading OS journal — R, the cost of mistakes and per-setup stats are computed for every trade.
No sign-up — the journal runs in your browser; an account is only needed for sync.