Your First Trade

This walkthrough covers a simple manual trade. Imported broker trades can use executions and expose additional P/L and cost controls.

Prerequisites

Before adding a trade:

  1. Open Account and configure at least one account with the correct base currency.

  2. Optionally create or seed strategies, confluences and exit reasons.

  3. Add required exchange rates if the trade/profit currency differs from the account base currency.

Create a Trade

  1. Open Trades.

  2. Click New Trade.

  3. Complete the required entry fields.

  4. Add exit details after the trade is closed.

  5. Add strategy tags, notes, images and reflection data as needed.

  6. Click Save Changes.

Demo Mode allows new manual trades while the current database contains fewer than 20 persisted trades.

Entry Details

Important fields include:

Field

Description

Instrument

Broker/platform symbol or ticker.

Direction

Long or Short.

Entry Price

Manual entry price, or a read-only VWAP when derived from executions.

Quantity

Position size. FTJ stores quantity in units.

Display

Choose Units or Lots for the selected account.

Session

Asia, London, NY, London/NY Overlap, Afternoon or Evening.

Timeframe

The chart timeframe used for the setup.

Currency

Trade/profit currency used for conversion where required.

Account

The FTJ account that owns the trade.

Entry Date Time

Entry date/time, including optional millisecond precision.

Units and Lots

FTJ stores trade quantity in units. Lots is a display and entry conversion.

The Position size panel shows the current Units/Lots relationship. Use Lot Settings to configure Units per Lot for the selected account and symbol. Do not rely on Lots display until the correct contract size is configured.

Exit and Realised P/L

Important fields include:

  • Exit Date Time;

  • Exit Price (Avg/VWAP);

  • Stop Loss;

  • Take Profit;

  • R/R Ratio;

  • Gross P/L (Base);

  • Net P/L (Base);

  • Swap (Base);

  • Fees (Base);

  • Exit Reason.

Open trades do not show realised Gross/Net P/L and are excluded from closed-trade performance KPIs.

For manual trades, FTJ calculates P/L from the entered trade fields and available exchange-rate data.

Execution-Based Trades

When a trade contains linked executions:

  • Entry and Exit can show Derived from executions.

  • Entry/exit prices are volume-weighted averages of the relevant fills.

  • Quantity is derived from the executions.

  • A position is closed when buys and sells net to zero within the application’s quantity tolerance.

  • Edit the underlying executions rather than typing over derived entry/exit values.

P/L Source

Eligible imported execution-based trades can show a two-option selector:

  • Broker reported - use usable booked account-currency P/L supplied by the broker.

  • Calculated - rebuild Gross P/L from the current executions and available conversion information.

Broker reported cannot be selected when no usable broker P/L exists. Save the trade to persist a changed P/L source; Cancel restores the previous saved source.

Adjust Costs

For imported trades, Adjust Costs creates separate journal adjustments for Fees and Swap.

  • Original broker-reported source values are not overwritten.

  • Net P/L uses the effective adjusted costs.

  • Save persists the adjustments; Cancel restores the previous saved state.

Strategy and Confluence Tags

Use Add Strategy and Add Confluence to tag the trade consistently. Tags support later filtering and performance review where those breakdowns are visible.

Images, Notes and Reflection

  • Add chart screenshots to the Images card.

  • Store a pre-trade plan and post-trade notes.

  • Complete the self-reflection ratings and optional free text.

Images are stored in the local database. Larger image limits increase database size.

Saving and Navigation

Use Save Changes to persist the trade.

When leaving a trade or the Trades page with unsaved changes, FTJ asks whether to save, discard or cancel. Prev/Next and list selection respect the current filtered trade list.

Use Ctrl+F to focus the Trades search field.

What’s Next?