Futures trading journal

Session, not midnight

Equity index futures roll at 5:00 PM America/Chicago by default. The calendar, the reconcile screen, and the day net use that session. You can change the roll hour in Settings. Saturday and Sunday can roll onto Monday.

Fees before the statement

Tradovate’s Orders file has no commission column. If the journal adds nothing, the day looks better than the statement. Pick a dated fee preset, then import Performance or the account statement and tie the session to the cent.

Replay is your fills

Own-fills replay walks the executions you uploaded, in order. It is not a recording of the DOM and it does not invent a reason for a loss. Notes and tags stay on the trade.

How a futures day gets into the book

Start from the file the platform already lets you download. Tradovate Orders, NinjaTrader 8 Executions, Rithmic Order History, a TopstepX trades CSV, Sierra Chart Trade Activity fills, and an Interactive Brokers Flex futures query are the supported shapes. Quantower and TradingView exports are Beta: the preview opens the column mapper, and Beta is not the same word as supported.

The preview lists the rows it will keep and the rows it will skip. Canceled, working, and rejected orders do not become trades. Nothing is written to the journal until you confirm. A confirmed batch can be undone. There is no general auto-sync. The only optional sync is a read-only TopstepX key, and that key cannot place, change, or cancel an order.

After the fills are in, the book rebuilds round trips. Partial fills stay visible. A repeated execution id is not stored twice. The day you see on the calendar is the CME session, not midnight in the browser and not the date printed on a stock blotter.

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What to compare before you pick a journal

A futures trading journal is doing its job when three things are true. The session matches the statement’s trade date. Fees are in the net, either from the file or from a dated preset you chose. A day that does not match is labelled, not averaged into the month.

Replay on this product walks the executions you uploaded, in the order they filled. It is not a recording of the DOM, and it does not invent a reason for a loss. Notes and tags stay on the trade you attach them to. Edge stats stay quiet until a bucket has 30 trades.

Fees, then the statement

Tradovate’s Orders file has no commission column. If the journal adds nothing, the day looks better than the statement by the commissions and exchange fees the statement will charge. Pick the fee preset on the account before you confirm. If the file already has a commission figure, that figure wins over the preset.

Import Performance, or the account statement, on Reconcile. A tied day matches to the cent. An open day names the gap: a missing fee, a partial fill, or no statement at all. The October sample includes a day that does not tie, so the screen is visible before you upload your own file. The sample is labelled sample data. It is not a customer result.

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The session clock

Equity index futures roll at 5:00 PM America/Chicago by default. A fill at 5:10 PM belongs to the next session, including Friday evening into Monday. You can change the roll hour in Settings. Saturday and Sunday can roll onto Monday. If your statement uses a different roll, the rule on the screen is the one this journal uses.

Timestamps without a zone are read as America/Chicago. That choice is why a journal that buckets by the calendar date on the timestamp will miss the statement even when every fill is present. The calendar, the reconcile screen, and the day net share that session.

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Sample