Your First Trade

This walkthrough takes you through recording a trade from start to finish. By the end, you’ll have a fully journaled trade with strategy tags, exit details, screenshots, and a self-reflection.

FTJ’s trade entry follows a five-step lifecycle, shown as a visual pipeline at the top of the Trades view:

Step 0 - Prerequisites

Before adding your first trade, make sure you have:

1. At least one Account configured. Navigate to Account in the sidebar and create one (see Accounts). Every trade is tied to an account with a base currency.

2. (Optional) Strategies defined. In the Settings view you can seed pre-made common strategies like Trend Following, Breakout Trading, Mean Reversion etc. You can use these as-is or create your own under Strategy in the sidebar.

Step 1 - Create a New Trade

1. Click Trades in the sidebar.

2. Click the button at the top of the trade list.

3. A blank trade form appears in the trades list and the panels to the right are ready to be configured.

Step 2 - Entry Details

Scroll down (or click Entry in the lifecycle bar) to fill in entry information.

Fill in the following fields:

Field	Description
Instrument	The ticker or symbol you traded (e.g. BTCUSD, EURUSD, NG).
Direction	Click Long or Short to set the trade direction.
Entry Price (Quote)	The price at which you entered the position.
Quantity	The position size. Use the Mode dropdown to switch between Units and Lots.
Session	The trading session (e.g. NY, Morning, Afternoon). Select from the dropdown.
Currency	The currency the instrument is quoted in (e.g. USD - US Dollar).
Account	Which account this trade belongs to.
Entry Date Time	The date and time you entered the trade. You can also set ms and the chart timeframe.

Note

If the trade’s currency differs from the account’s base currency, FTJ will need an exchange rate to convert P&L. See Exchange Rates.

Lot Settings

Click the gear icon (⚙) next to the Mode dropdown to configure lot sizes for the current instrument. This lets you switch between displaying quantities as raw units or lots.

Step 3 - Exit & P/L

Click Exit & P/L in the lifecycle bar or scroll to the Exit card on the right side.

Fill in:

Field	Description
Exit Date Time	When you closed the trade.
Exit Price (Avg/VWAP)	The price at which you exited. For scaled exits, this is the volume-weighted average.
Stop Loss	Your planned stop loss level. Used to calculate the Risk/Reward ratio.
Take Profit	Your planned take profit level.
R/R Ratio	Automatically calculated from Entry Price, Stop Loss, and Exit Price. Displayed as a colored badge (green for favorable, red for unfavorable).
Gross P/L (Base)	The raw profit or loss before fees, in the account’s base currency.
Net P/L (Base)	P/L after subtracting fees and swap, in the account’s base currency.
Swap (Base)	Overnight swap/rollover charges.
Fees (Base)	Commissions and transaction fees.
Exit Reason	Select from your configured exit reasons (e.g. “Hit Take Profit”, “Stopped Out”, “Manual Exit”). See Strategies, Confluences & Exit Reasons for managing exit reasons.

Tip

If your trade was derived from imported executions, the Entry and Exit fields will show a “Derived from executions” badge, and the values are automatically calculated from your individual fills.

Step 4 - Strategy & Confluences

Trading Strategies

• Click + Add Strategy to tag this trade with one or more strategies.

• A picker window opens showing all your available strategies. Select one (e.g. “Breakout Trading”) and it appears as a colored button on the card.

• You can assign multiple strategies to a single trade.

Confluences

• Click + Add Confluence to tag the market conditions or signals that supported your entry.

• Confluences are conditions you checked before entering (e.g. “Volume Confirmation”, “MACD Bullish Crossover”, “Support/Resistance Level”).

• Like strategies, you can assign multiple confluences per trade.

Tip

Tagging strategies and confluences consistently unlocks powerful analytics later. You’ll be able to better see which setups are actually profitable over time.

Step 5 - Reflect & Save

This is where you capture the context behind the trade using the Images, Journal Notes, and Self-Reflection cards.

Images

• Drag and drop chart screenshots onto the Images card, or click the + area to browse.

• Images are stored directly in your database (no external file dependencies).

• Each image can be up to 1920 × 1080 px and 2 MB by default (configurable in Settings).

• Click any thumbnail to open a full-size preview.

• Click the ✕ on a thumbnail to remove it.

Journal Notes

Two free-text fields are available:

• Trade Notes - Write your post-trade analysis. What happened? What did you observe?

• Pre-Trade Plan - Document what your plan was before entering. Comparing this to what actually happened builds self-awareness over time.

Self-Reflection

Use the Self-Reflection card to quickly score how well the trade matched your plan, execution, and overall expectations. Each prompt is rated on a 1-5 scale:

1. Did I follow my trading plan? - Rate how closely you stuck to your intended setup, risk, and execution rules.

2. Did I react well to market conditions? - Rate how well you adjusted as price action developed.

3. Positive gut feeling at entry? - Rate how confident and aligned the entry felt in the moment.

4. Satisfied with exit timing? - Rate whether the trade was closed where you intended, or where you now believe it should have been closed.

5. Overall trade rating - Give the trade an overall score based on the full outcome and process.

Use Additional Reflection for anything the scores do not capture, such as what confirmed the setup, where execution felt strong, or what you would do differently next time.

Saving the Trade

Once you’ve filled in all the details, click in the bottom-right corner. Your trade is now persisted to the database and will immediately appear in the trade list, the Dashboard, and all analytics.

Note

You can navigate between trades using the ← Prev and → Next buttons at the bottom, or by clicking any trade in the list on the left.

Executions (Advanced)

For traders who work with individual fills (executions), FTJ supports an execution-based workflow. Instead of manually entering entry/exit prices, you can add individual executions (buys and sells) and let FTJ aggregate them into a trade.

The Executions (Fills) card shows:

• Add - Manually create a new execution.

• Edit - Modify a selected execution.

• Reload - Re-fetch executions from the database.

• Delete - Remove a selected execution.

• Close Position - Automatically create a closing execution at the current market data.

Each execution row shows the time, side (B = Buy, S = Sell), quantity, price, fee, and order ID.

When a trade has linked executions, the Entry and Exit cards show “Derived from executions” and the aggregated values (VWAP entry price, total quantity, total fees) are computed automatically.

The trade is marked CLOSED when the net position reaches zero (total buys = total sells).

What’s Next?

• Learn about the Dashboard to understand your KPIs and charts.

• Set up Strategies, Confluences & Exit Reasons to build a library of your trading setups.

• If you trade multiple currencies, configure Exchange Rates.

• Ready to import history? See Importing Data.