How to keep a trading journal on MT4/MT5: the complete guide
By the Trading Journal team · Updated · 8 min read
What a trading journal is for
A trading journal is the record of your own trades plus the reasons behind them and what you learned. Its job is to answer questions MetaTrader cannot: which setups pay, which hours and days cost you, what each habit is worth in money. It is not a signal service and it does not trade.
Why MetaTrader’s own history is not enough
The History tab and its report hold the facts: every deal, the commission, the swap and a summary for the period. What they do not hold:
- Why you took the trade — the setup, the plan, the stop you meant to keep.
- Your mistakes — moved stop, early exit, revenge trade, oversized position.
- Slices — results by weekday, hour, symbol or setup.
- Your day — MetaTrader writes the broker’s server time, often «New York + 7 hours», so a trade at 01:30 on the server can belong to your previous evening (how time zones work).
A journal starts from the same facts and adds these.
Three ways to get MT4/MT5 trades into a journal
1. By hand
Typing each trade into a spreadsheet or an app. It works for a week. It is also where most journals die: copying prices and times is slow, a typo changes the result, and on a busy day you skip it.
2. From the report file
Export the history from MetaTrader and upload it. The file holds every deal with exact prices, times, commission and swap, so nothing is retyped. The catch: you repeat the export to bring new trades in. Step by step: how to export your MT5 trade history and how to export an MT4 account statement.
3. A live connection
New trades arrive by themselves. There are three common ways, and they differ in who touches your account:
- Your investor password on someone else’s servers. A service logs in to your account read-only and pulls the history. Simple, but your password leaves your computer, and some prop firms forbid outside access to the account.
- MetaTrader’s FTP report publishing. The terminal uploads a report to the journal on a schedule. No password, but the set-up is technical and new trades wait for the next upload.
- A read-only Expert Advisor in your own terminal. It reads the history and sends each new deal as it happens; it cannot place, change or close orders. No password; it works while the terminal runs.
On a prop-firm account check the firm’s rule first: which prop firms allow EAs.
What to include in a trading journal
Filled in from MetaTrader: symbol, side, size, entry and exit times and prices, commission, swap, net result — and partial closes as separate deals of one position.
Only you can add:
- Setup — the name of the pattern you traded, the same name every time.
- Planned stop — the risk you took on. Without it there is no R (below).
- Mistake tags — moved stop, early exit, late entry, no plan, oversized. Three to six tags you reuse beat a paragraph you never reread.
- Emotion — calm, rushed, angry, bored. One word is enough.
- One line of notes and, if it helps, a chart screenshot.
The test of a good journal entry: you can write it in under a minute right after the trade.
A trading journal example
One losing trade, logged the way this guide suggests. A EURUSD buy of 0.50 lot moves $5 per pip.
| Field | Example |
|---|---|
| Symbol and side | EURUSD, buy 0.50 lot |
| Entry → exit | 1.08420 → 1.08310, 14:05 → 14:41 server time |
| Planned stop | 1.08320 — 10 pips, $50 at risk |
| Result | −$58.50: −$55.00 on price, −$3.50 commission |
| R | −1.2R (−$58.50 ÷ $50) |
| Setup | London breakout |
| Mistake tag | Moved stop |
| Emotion | Rushed |
| Note | Moved the stop down after entry; second trade after a loss. |
The stop was 10 pips, the loss 11: the moved stop cost a pip and the commission. Across a month, the same tag on twenty trades shows what the habit costs in dollars.
The numbers that matter
- Net P&L — after commission and swap. Gross P&L flatters every strategy that trades often (where the costs sit in the MT5 report).
- Win rate — winners divided by winners plus losers. Alone it says little: 70 % winners with small wins and big losses can still lose money.
- Profit factor — gross profit divided by gross loss. Above 1 the trades made money; 1.5 means $1.50 won for every $1 lost.
- Expectancy — net P&L divided by the number of trades: what an average trade is worth.
- R-multiple — the result divided by the risk you planned. +2R means you made twice what you risked. Average R makes accounts of different sizes comparable.
- Max drawdown — the deepest fall of the equity curve from a peak. It is what you live through, and what a prop firm’s limit is checked against.
How MetaTrader’s own report shows these, worked out on an example: MT5 report metrics explained.
Mind the sample. A slice with a dozen trades is a hint, not a result. We mark anything under 15 trades as a small sample.
Make the totals match your broker
If the journal’s total for a month differs from the broker’s statement, every slice built on it is wrong too. The usual causes: commissions and swaps left out, deposits and withdrawals counted as profit, partial closes split or merged, a trading day cut at the wrong hour, an account in another currency. Reconcile once after each import: why journal P&L can differ from the broker.
A review routine you will keep
Daily, 5 minutes, after the session:
- Did I follow my plan on every trade? Tag the ones I didn’t.
- What did the day’s mistakes cost? A worked example: revenge trading, in numbers.
- One sentence for tomorrow.
Weekly, 30 minutes:
- Results by setup, weekday and hour — which ones pay, which ones cost.
- The cost of each mistake tag over the week.
- Rules kept versus broken: what the broken ones cost. How to write rules you can check: trading rules, with a template.
Monthly: change one thing — drop the weakest setup, skip the worst hour, cut size after two losses — and check next month whether it helped.
Prop-firm challenges
A challenge adds limits on top of your own rules: a daily loss limit, an overall max loss, sometimes a consistency rule. Two things to get right:
- Count the daily loss the way the firm does — from the initial size, the day’s balance or the higher of balance and equity, on the firm’s clock: daily loss limit calculator.
- Check what may run on the account before you connect anything: which prop firms allow EAs.
Spreadsheet or journal app
A spreadsheet is free and fully yours, and it works if you really fill it in. It struggles with partial closes, server time, commissions per deal and slices across hundreds of trades. A journal app does the import and the maths; you pay with trust in the vendor and, often, money.
How to choose a journal for MT4/MT5
- How trades get in — report file, investor password or an EA in your terminal; and how often.
- Whether the totals match your statement, commissions and swaps included.
- Time zones — does it handle the broker’s server time and your trading day?
- How fast the review is — tags in a minute, or a form you will skip.
- Price and what the free plan really includes.
- Can you export your data if you leave?
Side-by-side comparisons with sources: Myfxbook, TradeZella, Edgewonk.