April 30, 2026
Long before I created SwingTradeBot I was (inconsistently) journaling my trades. I’ve actually been a paying subscriber to a couple of different journaling software systems over the years. In the early days of SwingTradeBot I’d considered building a journal into SwingTradeBot but it always seemed like too much work and too much of a distraction from the original core focus.
I’ve also fielded many questions / feature requests over the years about tracking actual trades. There was a forum thread about that as well as messages like this from 2021:
and this one from 2018:
So this journal idea has always been lingering in the back of my mind. Over the last couple of years, as AI-enabled coding has been getting better and I’ve been using it more, it suddenly didn’t seem so daunting to take on adding journaling to the system. The bulk of this new stuff has been written by me giving somewhat detailed instructions to AI agents and them knocking out the implementation at warp speed.
I’d also grown tired of entering my trades (portfolio positions) in SwingTradeBot and then again in my external trading journal software. So I decided to go ahead and bring it all “in house”. So…
SwingTradeBot is evolving
- a stock scanner and signal service
- a complete system for improving your trading performance
What’s new
- Track every trade from entry to exit
- Record why you entered and exited
- Journal your thoughts during the trade
- Analyze performance across all trades
- See where you’re leaving money on the table
- Measure whether your strategy(ies) actually works
You can start turning your trading into a feedback loop
🧩 The new system (how it all fits together)
1. Trade Intelligence Layer (Foundation)
- Entry → scale in/out → exit
- Entry and exit reasons (structured tags)
- Journal notes (rich text, time-stamped)
- MFE / MAE (how the trade behaved while open)
- Post-exit analysis (what happened after you closed it)
Why this matters
- Did you exit too early?
- Did you follow your plan?
- Which setups actually work for you?
- Which habits are hurting you?
- Trade journaling
- Behavioral analysis
- Setup performance tracking
- Exit quality evaluation
2. Portfolio Intelligence Layer
- Daily portfolio equity
- Cash flows (deposits & withdrawals) — *** coming soon!
- Flow-adjusted returns (TWR)
- Max drawdown
- Equity curves
Why this matters
- True performance over time
- Risk (not just return)
- Consistency
- Drawdowns (and recovery)
- Real performance tracking
- Risk analysis
- Trustworthy metrics
3. Simulation & Coaching Layer (what’s coming next)
- What if I stopped making this mistake?
- What happens if I only trade my best setups?
- How consistent is my strategy, really?
- Monte Carlo simulations
- Scenario testing (e.g. remove “FOMO trades”)
- Profit factor and expectancy analysis
- Behavior-driven insights
- Decision support
- Habit correction
- A real edge
The big shift
Before
- Scan for stocks
- Find setups
- Place trades
Now
- Scan → Trade → Analyze → Improve → Repeat
From tools to system
- Trade journal → behavior engine
- Portfolio tracker → performance system
- Simulator → decision lab
A few examples of what you’ll now see
- “Your ‘A+ Setup’ trades have a profit factor of 2.1.”
- “Trades tagged ‘Scared – early’ still moved +4.3% after you exited.”
- “Your average trade has a 2.5:1 planned risk/reward, but you’re only capturing 0.8R.”
- “Your best trades are held 5–9 days.”
Early days — and what’s next
- More advanced performance metrics
- Strategy-level breakdowns
- Deeper behavioral insights
- Simulation tools to test improvements before risking capital
Why I built this
Try it out
- Log your next trade in a SwingTradeBot portfolio.
- Add your entry reason / entry signal(s)
- Track it to completion via the Action button / menu in the portfolio table
- Then look at what the data tells you.
Use the position sizing calculator to figure out the parameters of my trade. Once I’ve got that set, I use the “Send to Portfolio” button to populate the form for adding a position to my SwingTradeBot portfolio.
You’ll now see some new fields in that portfolio add form:
-
- Initial Stop: Has always been there but is now important to enter for calculating R-Multiples as well as other post-trade analytics
- Target Price: Used in the performance dashboard to analyze how well you’re “predicting” movements
- Signal / Setup: You can enter whatever signals you’re basing your entry on.
- Entry Notes: Think of these as (sentiment-assigned) ways to tag your trades.
Once a position (trade) is in your portfolio, you can manage it via the “Actions” button at in the portfolio table. The “scale in”, “Partial Exit” and “Close” actions all write to the behind the scenes trading journal. The delete button will wipe all traces of the position away.
Clicking the “View Trade” action will take you to the trade detail page where you’ll see stuff like this:
Here’s the lower part of the page:
And below that you can upload your own (probably annotated) images. You can add up to 10 images per trade:
At the top of the page is the “Performance Dashboard” button:
Which will take you to the heart of the journal, which has a ton of analysis. I won’t go into it all now but here are some screenshots — Top of the page:
A little lower:
And the bottom:
So I’m still tweaking things and there’s more I’ll be adding over the coming weeks. But I thought it was in good enough shape to announce and hopefully get some feedback from a wider audience. I’ll go into more detail later about the Trade Detail page and the Performance Dashboard / Ananlysis page. But for now, there are page tours you can take to get an overview of what’s currently available on those pages.
Final thought
journal
site features
Performance Analytics
Portfolio Management
portfolios
Trading Discipline
