Free Trading Journal Template for Futures Traders

Most people who search for a trading journal template want a file to download. That is the wrong starting point. A template is only a set of columns, and the columns decide whether your journal ever teaches you anything. Copy the wrong ones and you will end up with a tidy record of trades you never look at again.

This guide gives you a trading journal template you can build in Excel or Google Sheets in about ten minutes, with the exact columns, the formulas and the review routine that makes it worth keeping. It is written for futures traders, including anyone trading an evaluation or a funded account, so it covers tick values, contract size and rule breaches, not just entries and exits. All dollar figures are in USD.

What should a trading journal template include?

A good template has three layers. The first records what happened. The second records what you planned and whether you followed it. The third records what the trade cost you in behavior terms. Most free templates stop at the first layer, which is why they feel like bookkeeping.

Here is the column set we recommend. It is short on purpose, because a template you can fill in while tired gets used and a template with 40 fields gets abandoned by week two.

That is 17 columns, but only six of them need thought: setup, planned stop, followed rules, mistake tag, state and note. The rest come straight from your platform export.

Which formulas does a spreadsheet journal need?

You only need a handful. Put your trades on a sheet called Trades, one row per trade, and build everything else from it. The cell references below assume Net P&L is in column I, Planned risk in column L, R-multiple in column M and Mistake tag in column O. Adjust them to match your layout.

Planned risk in dollars. Planned stop in ticks, times the dollar value of one tick, times contracts. Keep a small lookup table of tick values on a second sheet and use a lookup so the number is never typed by hand.

R-multiple. Net P&L divided by planned risk. A trade that made $300 on $150 of planned risk is a 2R trade. This makes trades in different contracts comparable.

Win rate. =COUNTIF(I:I,">0")/COUNT(I:I)

Profit factor. Gross profit divided by gross loss: =SUMIF(I:I,">0")/ABS(SUMIF(I:I,"<0")). Above 1 means the sum of your winners is larger than the sum of your losers.

Expectancy per trade. =AVERAGE(I:I). This is the average dollar result of one trade, and it is the number that tells you whether your approach has any edge once costs are in.

Average R. =AVERAGE(M:M) if R-multiple lives in column M.

Cost by mistake tag. This is the formula most templates leave out: =SUMIF(O:O,"Revenge trade",I:I). Build one row per tag and you get the dollar cost of each habit. We come back to this below, because it is the most useful table in the whole sheet.

How do tick values change your template?

Futures journals live or die on dollars per tick. If you trade more than one contract, a price difference means nothing until you convert it. Build a small reference table on a second sheet with each contract you trade: its tick size, the dollar value of one tick and the dollar value of a full point.

Here is a hypothetical example of how it works. Say a contract has a minimum tick of 0.25 points, worth $5.00, so a full point is worth $20. A 20-point stop on one contract is 80 ticks, or $400 of risk before fees. Write that number in the Planned risk column before you enter, and the oversizing problem tends to fix itself, because you can see it.

Do not copy tick values from a blog post, including this one. Open the contract specifications on the CME Group site for each product you trade and enter the values yourself. Micro contracts are a fraction of the size of the standard ones, so make sure you pick the right row.

What mistake tags should your template use?

The Mistake tag column is what turns a trade log into a behavior log. Use a fixed dropdown list, not free text, or you will end up with eleven spellings of revenge trade and no way to count them. Start with these:

Be strict about the definitions. If a tag is vague you will argue with yourself about it at 4 pm on a red day. Revenge trading in particular is worth a closer look, and we cover the full pattern in our guide to how to stop revenge trading in futures.

How do you put a dollar cost on each mistake?

This is the angle that separates a journal that changes your trading from one that decorates it. After a few weeks, filter the sheet by each tag and sum the Net P&L. You get a table like this one. The numbers below are hypothetical and only show the layout.

In this made-up month, the trader earned money on plan trades and gave most of it back through two habits. A win rate or a profit factor would never show that. The by-tag table shows it in one glance, and it also tells you what to work on first: the revenge trades, not the setup.

Dollars are persuasive in a way percentages are not. "I revenge trade sometimes" is easy to wave away. "My revenge trades cost me $1,210 this month" is not.

How should you fill in the journal each day?

Keep the daily routine small enough that you will do it on your worst day. Two passes work well.

Before the trade. Fill in setup, planned stop, planned risk and state. This takes under a minute and is the part most people skip. If you cannot name the setup or the stop, you do not have a trade yet.

After the session. Paste or type the results, answer Followed rules, pick the mistake tag and write one line in Note. Do it within an hour of the close while you still remember what you were thinking. If you wait until the weekend you will rationalize.

How do you review a trading journal template each week?

A weekly review of 20 to 30 minutes does more than any amount of daily staring. Follow the same order every time.

1. Update the cost-by-tag table for the week.
2. Find the tag with the largest dollar loss. That is your single focus for next week.
3. Write one plain rule that would have prevented it, for example "No new entry for 15 minutes after a losing trade."
4. Check results by hour and by instrument for any obvious leak, such as a bad stretch every afternoon.
5. Look at your rule-following trades only. Is the plan itself working, apart from your habits?

One focus at a time is the point. Traders who try to fix six habits in a week usually fix none.

If you trade a funded account, add a quick check of your daily loss and where you stand against your drawdown line. Each firm's rules differ and change, so confirm them on the firm's own site rather than relying on a template. Set your own daily stop tighter than the firm's, because the firm's limit is where your account ends and yours is where you stop making things worse.

Excel, Google Sheets or Notion: which is better for a trading journal?

Any of them works. Choose the one you will open every day.

If you are still deciding whether to pay for anything at all, our guide to a free trading journal covers the limits worth checking before you commit.

Where do spreadsheet journals break down?

A spreadsheet is a good place to start. It is free, and building the sheet forces you to decide what matters. The problems appear in predictable places.

• Entry. Retyping trades from a platform export is slow and error-prone. Importing a CSV into the sheet helps, but column layouts differ by platform and need cleaning each time.
• Duplicates. Re-importing overlapping date ranges creates double rows that quietly corrupt every formula.
• Tagging. Tags are only as honest as you are, and by the time you tag, the emotion is gone.
• Maintenance. Formulas break when someone inserts a column. Fixing them is time you could have spent reviewing.
• Behavior detection. A sheet cannot tell you that you took a trade four minutes after a loss unless you build that logic yourself.

None of this means a spreadsheet is bad. It means that when you notice you are spending more time maintaining the sheet than reading it, you have outgrown the template. For a wider look at what a futures journal should track and how often to review, see our guide to a trading journal for futures traders.

Key takeaways

• A template is a set of columns. Pick columns that capture your plan and your behavior, not only entries and exits.
• Keep it short enough to fill in on your worst day. Seventeen columns, six of them needing thought, is plenty.
• Work in dollars per tick and in R, and write planned risk down before you enter.
• Use a fixed dropdown of mistake tags, with strict definitions, so you can count them.
• Build the cost-by-tag table. The dollar cost of each habit is the most useful number in the sheet.
• Review weekly, pick one habit to fix, and write one rule for it.
• Verify tick values and firm rules on the official sites rather than trusting a template.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best trading journal template for futures traders?

The best one is the one you will fill in. For futures it should include contracts, planned stop in ticks, planned risk in dollars, a followed-rules checkbox and a mistake tag. Those fields matter far more than the number of charts on the dashboard.

Is there a free trading journal template for Excel and Google Sheets?

You can build one in about ten minutes using the columns and formulas in this guide. The same layout works in both Excel and Google Sheets, since the formulas are standard. Build it yourself rather than downloading a bundle you do not understand, so you know how every number is calculated.

What should I track in a trading journal?

At minimum: date and time, instrument, side, contracts, net P&L, setup, planned stop, whether you followed your rules, a mistake tag and your state before entry. The last three are the ones that change behavior.

How do I calculate R-multiple in a spreadsheet?

Divide net P&L by planned risk in dollars. If you risked $150 and made $300, that is 2R. If you lost $150, that is -1R. It lets you compare trades across contracts and position sizes.

How often should I review my trading journal?

Do a short check at the end of each day and a proper review once a week. The weekly review, where you total results by mistake tag, is the one that changes what you do next week.

Can a spreadsheet track revenge trading automatically?

Not without extra work. You can add a column that calculates the minutes since your previous exit and flag rows under a threshold, but it needs careful formulas and clean timestamps. Many traders end up tagging by hand instead.

When should I move from a spreadsheet to a trading journal app?

When maintaining the sheet takes longer than reviewing it, or when you want behavior flags and pattern costs without building them yourself. Until then a spreadsheet is a perfectly good tool.

Traderilla imports your Tradovate or NinjaTrader CSV exports and flags mistakes such as revenge trades and cool-down breaks automatically and shows what each pattern costs you in dollars. Start on the free plan with no card (it shows your most expensive pattern), or try Elite free for 7 days (then $59/month unless you cancel).