What it finds in a sample book
A made-up book of 64 trades over four weeks, built with the pattern this check exists to catch. .
You're right 64% of the time and still behind: your average loser ($73.27) is 2.5× your average winner ($29.30). And you hold losers 5.4× as long as winners (18m against 3m).
Three numbers, then one sentence
How often you win
The share of trades that closed up. On its own it says very little: plenty of traders are right most of the time and still lose money.
A typical loser against a typical winner
Your average losing trade divided by your average winning one. Above 1, each loss costs more than a win brings in, and a high win rate has to carry that.
How long you hold each
The average time in a losing trade against a winning one. Holding losers longer than winners is the commonest shape of the leak: the win is taken fast, the loss is given time.
The sentence puts the three together in plain words, the same way the full journal does, because it is the journal’s own code reading your file. Why a high win rate can still lose money
The what-if
It asks one question of your own trades: if no loss had been bigger than a set amount, where would you have ended up? It starts at the size of a typical winner, and you can type any other amount.
It is hindsight, and the best case of it. Every loss bigger than the cap is set to the cap and every winner is left alone. A file of closed trades can’t show whether a winner dipped past the cap before it came good, so a real stop would have closed some of those too. It is a question to think about, not advice.
Where to find your export
Any trade history export works if it has a date, a symbol, and either a profit-and-loss column or the buys and sells themselves (they’re paired into round trips the way the full journal pairs them). The steps for the brokers most people use:
Robinhood
- Account → Menu (☰; on the web, skip this) → Reports and statements → Reports.
- Generate new report → choose the account and the start and end dates → Generate report.
- When it's ready (usually about 2 hours, up to 24), download the CSV from Reports and drop it above.
Webull
- Desktop app: Account (left side; under More if hidden) → Orders → the ☰ icon on the right → Export Orders.
- Website: WebTrade → Account → Order History → Export. Phone app: Account → History → Orders Records → the download icon.
- Drop it above.
Charles Schwab / thinkorswim
- Schwab.com → Accounts → History & Statements → Transactions.
- Set the date range, then Export (top-right) → CSV.
- In thinkorswim desktop: Monitor → Account Statement → set dates → right-click the grid → Export to File → CSV.
- Drop it above.
Fidelity
- Fidelity.com → Accounts & Trade → Portfolio → Activity & Orders (or History).
- Set the date range → the download icon → CSV.
- For realized gains: Accounts → Tax Info → Realized Gain/Loss → Download.
- Drop it above.
Interactive Brokers (IBKR)
- Client Portal → Performance & Reports → Statements (or Menu → Reporting → Statements).
- Press the blue Run arrow beside the Activity statement → choose the Period and the dates → Format: CSV.
- Save the file when it's offered, then drop it above.
E*TRADE
- etrade.com → Accounts → Transactions (or At a Glance → Transactions).
- Set the date range → Download → Export to Excel/CSV.
- For gains: Accounts → Tax Center → Gains & Losses → Download.
- Drop it above.
Public
- Menu (≡) → Settings → Documents → Account Statements or Trade Confirmations (the same on the web).
- Public gives these as PDF documents, not a spreadsheet — PlainSight reads CSV and Excel files, so a statement can't be dropped in as it is.
- Type or paste the trades from a statement into a spreadsheet (date, symbol, side, quantity, price), save it as CSV and drop it above — or use “Paste data” in the full journal.
tastytrade
- History tab → Transactions → choose the account and the date range.
- Scroll to the bottom: the list loads about 200 lines at a time, and lines not loaded are left out of the file.
- Press the CSV icon, then drop it above.
Every broker’s steps, and what to do when an export won’t read
Your file stays on your computer
This page reads the file inside your browser. It is never uploaded, and nothing in it is sent anywhere. The page counts which buttons get pressed (the name of the step and nothing else, never the file), so we can tell whether it’s useful. It also asks how many Founding 50 seats are left, and if you came through a friend’s invite or a partner’s link it keeps that code in this browser for 30 days, asks what the invite gives and counts a partner’s visit once a day. None of that involves your file.
If you press Open my full journal, the file is handed to the journal inside this same browser and kept there for at most thirty minutes, so you don’t have to find it again. If you buy the one-time report, you pay on Stripe’s own page; the file still stays here. A trading journal that doesn’t need your broker login
Questions
- Is it free?
- Yes. The check needs no account and costs nothing. The full journal is free for one file of your own with a free account; Pro keeps score every week.
- Is my file uploaded?
- No. It is read in your browser, on your computer, and nothing in it leaves.
- Which files work?
- CSV, TSV or Excel exports from a broker or a journal app: one row per trade with a profit-and-loss column, or one row per fill (buy or sell) with a date, symbol, quantity and price. Options and futures fills pair the same way as shares. Currency pairs are left out, because their profit and loss is in another currency.
- Why does it need ten trades?
- Fewer than that and the three numbers are mostly luck. A month or more of history says much more.
- Is the what-if advice?
- No. It is arithmetic on trades that already happened, in the best case for the rule. Whether a stop suits how you trade is your call.
- What’s in the full journal?
- Everything behind the three numbers: every trade on an equity curve and a calendar, results by setup, symbol, time of day and how long you held, a daily loss limit and profit target held against every day, and what the report found in plain words.