Free tool
What your export says about your stops
Every journal tells you what you made. None tells you what you did to your stop, because none reads the file that records it. Tradovate's notifications log keeps every stop as placed and every move, timed. It is the one export that can show a stop being given more room.
Drop the notifications log here
In Tradovate: the notifications panel, then export. Its first line reads Symbol,Time,Title,Text.
No file has been read.
Read from no file yet · no days yet
Stops on record
not read
Nothing has been read yet.
How many you moved
not read
Nothing has been read yet.
Times a stop was changed
not read
Nothing has been read yet.
Moves that gave the trade more room
not read
Nothing has been read yet.
The widest single one
not read
Nothing has been read yet.
How they ended
not read
Nothing has been read yet.
01What these numbers are not
- They are not a grade. The file cannot know what you planned. Sometimes a stop is given room for a good reason, and no export can tell those times apart.
- Moving a stop toward your entry is not counted against you. Most moves in a trailing session are that.
- It reads one file. It does not know your account size, your multiplier, or what any of it cost.
- An export that begins mid-session shows the earliest level it can, which may not be where the stop started. It says so rather than guessing.
02Why the log and not the orders export
An orders export keeps one row per order, in its last state. A stop placed at 7,626.00 and trailed to 7,622.50 shows only 7,622.50: a trade put on with three and a quarter points of room looks like one put on with none. The notifications log keeps all of it.
Orders export
7,622.50
Notifications log
7,626.00 7,622.50
03What to do with the answer
If the moves that gave the trade more room count zero, that is good news; close the page. If not, the useful question is not "why did I do that" but "what would have stopped me".
Two answers: what a broker can and cannot hold you to, and what happens to a stop when you get out.
Degen Pro is a Mac app for Interactive Brokers that holds the stop so it cannot be widened, and closes the broker and the charts when the day's budget is spent. That is the paid part; this page is useful without it.
Also free: the daily loss budget calculator; what each exit does to your stop. Guides by RSS.