As one of my New Years resolutions is to make sure I document my trading more diligently, I was wondering if anyone is currently using some sort of automated journal/diary, etc. There is something called StockTickr which has some of the things I'd like, but it's $50/month Ideally it would: 1) Import a text file of your trades. 2) Display the trades and results on a chart and allow you to enter some little annotations/etc. 3) Allow you to record notes/thoughts and perhaps general market info. 4) Keep track of various trade statistics. Yes, you can print screen/cut/paste in to an Excel or Word document, but my goal is to have something that's as automated as possible so it is not a chore and takes the minimum of time to do. Anybody have any thoughts on the subject? First instinct is to roll my own, but perhaps there's some open source material out there that I am unaware, so I wanted to check before I dive in.
I have been thinking of this off and on for about 2 years. The sticky point is how to effectively link "transactions" to trades. You have your dump of data from your broker. Now you have to link everything up. I've been attempting to think through this and have come up with a few solutions, none that I like much. What comes closest is using local software to "group" transactions into trades. Then "web services" to connect the local software to a website. Seems clunky. Another option is having all the info local. But sheesh. Gathering all the data you could possibly need to do some descent stats seems to be such a waste of space on each user's machine. The website solution fixes that. What about a website for the basic data, and personal information locally. Well, it has its goods and bads. And that's where I leave it. I get distracted by my own trading, and have this project sitting idle. Okay, I'm done rambling.
There's actually a free version of StockTickr's trading journal that does most of what you've listed. Here's what's available in each version: http://www.stocktickr.com/docs/signup/