SetupBook is a trading journal for people who enter their trades by hand. You tell it what you did — symbol, direction, result, and as much detail as you want — and it does the arithmetic a trader should never do in their head: win rate, profit factor, expectancy, R-multiples, drawdown, and the price of every mistake you tag.
This guide walks through every screen in the order you will meet them. Every number quoted comes from the demo account you can sign in with and click around yourself:
Demo account — email
demo@setupbook.dev, passwordSetupbook-demo-2026. It has five trading accounts, three months of trades, notes, screenshots and shared cards. Nothing in it is private; feel free to edit, add and delete.
1. The idea in one minute
A journal only works if you fill it in. SetupBook is built around one promise: logging a trade takes thirty seconds. Symbol, long or short, and the net result are enough. Everything else — prices, stop, target, strategy, mistakes, emotions, notes, screenshots — is optional and can be added later.
Once trades are in, the app computes everything from what you entered. It never guesses. If you type prices, it derives the P&L from them and warns you when the number you typed disagrees with the fills. If you only type a result, it uses that.
Three things make the numbers trustworthy:
- Risk is a number you enter or the app derives from your stop. Every result is then expressed in R — how many times your risk you made or lost. Making $180 with $150 at risk is +1.20R. Losing $150 with $150 at risk is −1.00R. R lets you compare a $10,000 account with a $100,000 one.
- Break-even has a threshold. A trade that nets +$4 after fees is not really a win. Each account has a break-even threshold (the demo's main account uses $10); results inside ±threshold count as BE and are excluded from the win rate.
- Mistakes are tags with a cost. When you tag a trade "Moved stop" or "FOMO entry", the app adds up what those trades cost you and shows your discipline (the share of trades with no mistake tagged).
And one thing makes the trader visible, not only the trades: a morning check-in (sleep, energy, mood, three taps on the dashboard) and a state at entry (one tap in the trade form). Analytics reads them against your results, so "I trade worse when I am tired" stops being a feeling and becomes a number you can check (section 7, Psychology).
2. Signing up and onboarding
- Open the app and choose Start free. Sign up with an email and password or with Google.
- Onboarding asks for four things: your display name, your language, your time zone, and your first account.
- The first account needs a name, a type (Live, Demo or Prop), a currency, a starting balance and a break-even threshold. Pick the threshold as a money amount (e.g. $10) or as a percentage of the balance (e.g. 0.05 %).
- Tick Start with sample data if you want something to look at: twelve closed trades, an open position and a few day notes, dated up to yesterday. Delete them whenever you like (select them on the Trades page).
- Finish. You land on the dashboard — empty, with the New trade form already open, unless you chose the sample data. An empty dashboard also offers Load sample data later.
Getting around. The sidebar lists Dashboard, Trades, Analytics, Journal, Playbook and Accounts; at the bottom sit the User guide and Send feedback (a bug, an idea, up to three screenshots — it reaches the maker directly). The top bar holds the account picker, the period selector, New trade and, at the right, your initial: click it for Settings → Profile. On a phone the sidebar becomes a tab bar (Dashboard, Trades, +, Analytics, More), and the account and period controls sit on a second row that scrolls sideways.
Your time zone matters: every time you see in the app, every "trading day" in the calendar and every session label is computed in that zone. The demo trader is in Europe/Istanbul.
3. Accounts
Open Accounts in the sidebar. The demo has:
| Account | Type | Starting balance | Break-even | Why it is there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Main | Live | $10,000 | $10 | The everyday account; 22 trades since August |
| FTMO Phase 1 | Prop | $100,000 | 0.05 % ($50) | A prop evaluation with daily-loss, drawdown and profit-target rules |
| Apex 50K | Prop | $50,000 | $25 | A prop account sitting at 84 % of its max drawdown — note the orange warning |
| Paper | Demo | $1,000 | $5 | A paper account used to test a new strategy |
| IC Markets EUR | Demo | €5,000 | €10 | A EUR account, to show how currencies are kept apart |
Each card shows the starting balance, the current balance (starting balance + net P&L), the net P&L and the trade count. Prop accounts add three bars:
- Daily loss limit — today's loss against the limit.
- Max drawdown — how far the balance currently sits below its highest point, against the limit. Apex is $2,100 under its peak with a $2,500 allowance, so the bar is at 84 % and the card shows an 80 %+ warning; at 100 % it turns red and reads Limit hit.
- Profit target — net profit against the target.
The same three bars appear on the dashboard in a Prop limits card for every prop account in view, with what is left of each limit, and the Risk field of the trade form warns when the risk you are about to take is more than what is left of today's loss limit. When a day reaches 80 % of the limit, or hits it, the app says so once with a small notice.
Actions on a card: Edit (name, balance, threshold, rules), Set active, Export CSV (just this account's trades), and under the ⋯ menu Archive (hides it from every list) and Delete (removes it with all its trades — you have to type the account's name to confirm).
The active account is the one every page shows by default. The picker in the top bar switches between accounts or chooses All accounts. "All accounts" only combines accounts in the same currency as your first one — the EUR demo account is deliberately left out of the USD total, because adding euros to dollars would be meaningless.
4. Logging a trade
Press N anywhere, or click New trade. The form has four steps; only step 1 has required fields.
Step 1 · Basics (required)
- Account — defaults to the active one.
- Symbol — type it, or pick from the list of symbols you have used. New symbols are remembered. The app suggests a contract multiplier for common ones (NQ, ES, MES, XAUUSD, EURUSD …).
- Side — Long or Short.
- Opened at — defaults to now. Closed at — leave empty to keep the trade open.
- Net P&L — the money you made or lost after commissions. Required unless you enter prices in step 2.
- Risk — how much you were risking (the stop distance in money). Needed for R. Calculate, next to the field, does the position sizing for you: balance × risk % gives the amount to risk, and with an entry and a stop it gives the quantity that fits; Use in trade writes risk, stop, entry and quantity into the form. The balance is pre-filled from the account (starting balance plus closed P&L) and the risk % is remembered for the next trade.
- Strategy, Setup quality (A+, A, B, C), Mistakes, screenshots and a TradingView link are all optional.
- State at entry — one tap from 1 (tilted) to 5 (calm): how you feel as you open the trade. Optional, like everything below the basics; Analytics reads it against your mistake tags.
Press Enter to save. Save and add another keeps the form open with the same account, symbol and session.
Step 2 · Prices (optional, but worth it)
Enter your fills: one or more entries, one or more exits, each with a price and quantity. Add the stop, target, multiplier, commission and fees. The app then derives:
- the average entry and exit,
- the gross result: (exit − entry) × quantity × multiplier for a long, the reverse for a short,
- the net result: gross − commission − fees,
- the risk: |entry − stop| × quantity × multiplier,
- the planned R:R: |target − entry| ÷ |entry − stop|.
Worked example — the demo's NQ trade on Oct 7 (+$320):
| Entry | 2 contracts at 24,910.50 |
| Exits | 1 at 24,918.00 (15:14), 1 at 24,919.25 (15:30) — a partial, then the rest |
| Stop / target | 24,906.75 / 24,921.00 |
| Multiplier | 20 (one NQ point is $20 per contract) |
| Gross | (24,918 − 24,910.5) × 1 × 20 + (24,919.25 − 24,910.5) × 1 × 20 = $325 |
| Commission + fees | $5 |
| Net | 325 − 5 = $320 |
| Risk | (24,910.5 − 24,906.75) × 2 × 20 = $150 |
| R | 320 ÷ 150 = +2.13R (planned 2.8R) |
Open that trade in the demo (Trades → 2026-10-07 NQ) and you will see every line above in the Prices block, plus the green note "Net matches the prices: 325.00 − 5.00 = 320.00 · computed".
When your number disagrees with the fills. The NQ trade on Oct 9 has fills that give $0.00, but the trader typed +$4 (a broker rebate). The app keeps the number you typed, marks the trade as manual, and shows a yellow line: "Prices give $0.00; you entered +$4." You decide which one is right; the app never silently overrides you.
MAE / MFE. If you enter the worst and best price the trade reached, the detail view tells you how close you came to the stop and how much of the way to target the trade travelled, and Analytics turns the same numbers into Exit analysis (section 7).
Chart. For crypto symbols (anything quoted in USDT, USDC, BTC …) the detail view draws Binance spot candles around the trade with the entry, exit, stop and target on them. Other markets have no free price source yet, so they show no chart.
Step 3 · Review
Your initial bias, your emotion (calm, focused, excited, anxious, angry, tired, FOMO), an execution rating from 1 to 5 — how well you executed, not whether you won — and the pre-trade checklist (see Playbook). Mistake tags can also be added here.
Step 4 · Notes
Four free-text boxes: the plan, the entry reasoning, what happened during the trade, and the review / lesson afterwards. The demo's Oct 7 trade has all four filled in; most trades only need one.
Open positions and closing
A trade without a closing time is open. It appears in the Open positions strip at the top of the dashboard with its age ("Open · 1d"), and is excluded from every statistic until it closes. Positions open for more than 30 days get a red badge — the demo's US30 swing has been open for 38 days. Click Close to add the exit fill and closing time.
Editing, duplicating, deleting
Every trade has Edit, Duplicate (same symbol, strategy and session, new times) and Delete. Deleting shows a confirmation; after saving a new trade, the toast offers Undo for a few seconds.
To change many trades at once, tick them in the Trades table: a bar appears with Add strategy, Add mistake (or remove all mistakes), Setup quality, Session and Delete. Useful right after an import.
5. Trades: table and calendar
Trades lists every trade of the active account for the chosen period. It opens on the calendar; the toggle at the top switches to the table, and the choice stays in the address so a bookmark keeps it.
- Period (top bar): 7d, 30d, 90d, 1y, All, or any range from the calendar icon next to them (This month and Last month are one click). The default is 30 days. The same control drives the dashboard and analytics.
- Filters: symbol, side, result, strategy, mistake, session, setup quality, plus a text search over symbols and notes.
- Columns lets you hide or show columns; sorting is by clicking a header.
- The footer totals the list: 13 trades · 6 W · 5 L · 1 BE · +$577.00 · +0.33R in the demo's last 30 days.
- Export CSV downloads what you see, with ISO dates and plain numbers, ready for a spreadsheet.
- Import brings trades in from a file: a SetupBook CSV, a MetaTrader 4 statement or MetaTrader 5 history report saved as HTML, a Binance trade history (fills are grouped into positions), a TradingView list of trades (type the symbol, the file has none), or any other CSV — the dialog guesses which column is which and lets you correct it. Choose the account, tell it which time zone the file's times are in (MetaTrader files are in the broker's server time, usually UTC+2 or UTC+3), check the preview and confirm. Trades already in the journal — same id, or the same symbol, side, minute and quantity — are skipped, so importing the same file twice is harmless.
Switch to Calendar to see the same trades on a month grid. Each day shows its net and trade count, coloured green or red; the right-hand column sums each week (October in the demo: +$130, +$199, +$248); the header sums the month (+$577, 7 of 11 days profitable, best day Oct 7, worst Oct 8). Click a day to see its trades and its day note underneath.
6. Dashboard
The dashboard is the answer to "how am I doing?" for the active account and period.
Eight KPI cards:
| Card | What it means | Demo (Main, 30d) |
|---|---|---|
| Net P&L | Sum of net results of closed trades | +$577.00, 12 trades |
| Cost of mistakes | Net of every trade that carries a mistake tag | −$415.00, 4 of 12 tagged |
| Discipline | Trades with no mistake tag ÷ all trades | 66.7 %, 8 clean trades |
| Win rate | Wins ÷ (wins + losses). Break-evens are excluded | 54.5 % — 6 W · 5 L · 1 BE |
| Profit factor | Gross profit ÷ gross loss. Above 1 means you make more than you lose | 2.34 — $1,000 / $427 |
| Expectancy | Average R per trade, and the average money per trade | +0.33R, $48.08 per trade |
| Max drawdown | Largest fall from the equity peak, measured over the whole account history | −1.4 % (−$150, Oct 8) |
| Trades | Count, and the number of days you traded | 12, 11 trading days |
Small samples are flagged: with fewer than five trades the cards carry an n=… badge so you do not read too much into them.
Prop limits — for prop accounts, the daily loss, drawdown and profit-target bars with what is left of each (section 3).
Equity curve — your balance after every closed trade. The curve starts at the balance you had at the beginning of the period (the demo's 30-day view starts at $10,563: $10,000 plus $563 earned in August and September). Trades that carry a mistake tag are marked with a red dot, so you can see what discipline costs where it happened.
Daily net P&L — one bar per trading day, with best and worst day underneath.
This week — net, trades, win rate, total R and the most frequent mistake of the current week, with two reminders when they apply: last week had trades but no week review, or a recent trading day has no end-of-day note. Report (PNG) renders the week as a one-page card you can download and send to a mentor or a prop firm.
Goals and streaks — progress towards the targets you set in Settings → Goals (monthly net, monthly R, a daily trade limit that warns when today reaches it) and your clean streak: how many trades, and how many trading days in a row, without a mistake tag.
Performance — the top symbols, strategies or sessions by net, with trade count, win rate and average R. "See all in Analytics" opens the full breakdowns.
Mistakes — the cost of all tagged trades, your discipline, and the most expensive tags. In the demo's last 30 days four tagged trades cost −$415; eight trades were clean, so discipline is 66.7 %.
Recent trades and Today (today's day note, with an Edit button) close the page. The Today card also carries the morning check-in: last night's sleep, your energy and your mood, each one tap from 1 to 5, saved as you tap. Three taps before the session, never a reminder, never required; the Psychology cards in Analytics are built from them.
7. Analytics
Analytics is the dashboard's numbers in depth, again for the active account and period.
KPI strip — net, win rate, profit factor, expectancy, average win / loss and payoff (167 / 85, payoff 1.95 in the demo), longest streaks (2 W / 1 L), recovery factor (net ÷ max drawdown = 3.85) and dependence (the largest win's share of gross profit, 32 %; above 40 % means one trade carries your month).
Trader score — a 0–100 summary that needs at least ten trades. It blends six components with fixed weights; each is normalised to 0–1 and multiplied by its weight:
| Component | Weight | Demo raw | Normalised | Points |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Win rate | 0.20 | 54.5 % | 0.82 | 16.4 |
| Profit factor | 0.20 | 2.34 | 0.89 | 17.9 |
| Expectancy (R) | 0.20 | +0.33 | 0.67 | 13.3 |
| Max drawdown | 0.15 | 1.4 % | 0.93 | 14.0 |
| Consistency | 0.10 | 63.6 % | 0.64 | 6.4 |
| Discipline | 0.15 | 66.7 % | 0.67 | 10.0 |
| Score | 78 |
"How it is computed" on the card spells out the normalisation (win rate counts from 30 % to 60 %, profit factor from 1.0 to 2.5, expectancy from 0 to 0.5R, drawdown from 20 % down to 0 %).
Drawdown — the equity's distance below its peak, as a step chart, with a caption such as "Max drawdown −1.4 % (−$150) after trade 6 on Oct 8 · recovered in 4 trades".
Breakdowns — by symbol, strategy, session, setup quality, side, weekday and opening hour. Each row shows trade count, win rate and net; the bar is proportional to the largest net in the list. In the demo, FVG is 3 for 3 (+$504) while B-grade setups are 1 for 4 (−$306) — exactly the kind of fact a journal exists to surface.
R distribution — a histogram of results in 0.5R bins. Consistency — net per trading day with the share of profitable days.
Exit analysis — needs the MAE and MFE from step 2. For each trade it works out how much the trade was worth at its best price, what the exit actually kept, and the share of the worst-to-best range you captured (exit efficiency). The card sums what was left on the table, compares the average MFE in R with the average realized R, counts losers that were once up 1R or more, and lists the five trades that left the most.
Discipline and equity — the equity curve with the share of clean trades over the last ten trades drawn on a second axis, and a red dot on every mistake-tagged trade. If the dots cluster where the curve turns down, the tags are telling you something.
Psychology — four cards that read your state against your trades. By emotion is a breakdown by the label from step 3, in circumplex order (pleasant states first, then unpleasant). State over time draws one measure of your choice — sleep, energy, morning mood, end-of-day mood or calm at entry — day by day on a 1–5 scale, with net P&L by day beneath it; the caption gives the average and the mood drift (end of day minus morning). Days by morning state bands the days you rated a morning measure as low (1–2), mid (3) or high (4–5) and shows, for each band, how many trades you took per day, what they made, the win rate and how often a trade carried a mistake tag. Mistakes by state at entry is the share of mistake-tagged trades for each state from 1 (tilted) to 5 (calm). "How these are measured" on the card explains the method; the full write-up with sources is in the repository under docs/spec/mood-measurement.md. Read them as patterns in your own data, not verdicts: a few days say little, and a bad day lowers the mood as surely as a low mood makes a bad day.
By month and week — a year table: one row per month, one column per calendar week, every cell coloured by its net. It answers "which weeks make my money?" at a glance. The demo's 2026 row reads May +$270, June +$505, July −$775 (the tilt month that started the journal), August +$200, September +$363, October +$577; October's weeks are +$130, +$199 and +$248. Use the arrows to move between years. This table ignores the period selector and always shows whole years.
Mistakes — a table with a No mistake row for comparison: clean trades in the demo average +$124, tagged ones −$103.75.
8. Journal
The journal is where you write, one day at a time. The left list shows every day of the month that has trades or a note; a blue dot marks days with a note.
For the selected day: a morning plan, the morning check-in (sleep, energy, mood, each 1–5), the day's trades, an end-of-day review, an end-of-day mood from 1 (bad) to 5 (good) and a one-line lesson. Save with the button; the time of the last save is shown next to it.
Below, the week card sums the selected day's week — net, win rate, trading days and the most frequent mistake — with a free-text week review and a Report (PNG) button that renders the week as a downloadable card. The demo's week of Oct 12–16 reads: +$248, 60 % win rate, 5 trading days, top mistake "Unplanned entry", and the review says what to change next week.
9. Playbook
The playbook holds your strategies and your pre-trade checklist.
Strategies are the tags you attach to trades, with a colour, a description and numbered entry criteria. The table shows each strategy's trades, win rate, net and average R over the whole account history, so you can see which models actually pay: in the demo FVG is 5 trades, 100 %, +$714, +0.99R, while Pullback is 3 trades, 33 %, −$25. Click a row for its criteria; Edit changes them; New strategy adds one. Ten common strategies come pre-installed; rename or delete any of them.
The pre-trade checklist is a list of rules shown in step 3 of every new trade. Mark a rule required or optional. The Kept column counts how often you actually ticked it: the demo trader kept "Stop set before entry" on 21 of 22 trades but "No red-folder news within 30 minutes" on only 14 of 22 — a habit the numbers made visible.
10. Sharing a trade
A closed trade's detail view has a Share button. It creates a public, read-only card at a link like /s/demo-nq-2026-10-14 that anyone can open without an account. The dialog shows the card itself: click any detail — the money, the prices, a note, the screenshots — to leave it off, and the choice is remembered for your next share. The demo shares its Oct 14 NQ trade with the money hidden and its Oct 7 trade with everything visible. The public page offers Download PNG. Stop sharing removes the card; the link dies immediately.
11. Settings
- Profile — display name.
- Preferences — theme (Black is the default; Dark, Light and System are available — this is the only place the theme changes), language (English / Türkçe), time zone, currency display (
$ 1,234.00orUSD 1,234.00), the first day of the week (affects the calendar and the week tables), text size (Compact, Default, Large, Extra large — everything scales together) and table density. - Goals — a monthly net target, a monthly R target and a maximum number of trades per day. The dashboard's Goals and streaks card tracks them; leave a field empty to skip it.
- Symbols — each symbol's asset class, multiplier and default commission. The multiplier turns a price move into money: NQ is 20 (one point × one contract = $20), ES is 50, MES is 5, XAUUSD is 100 (one dollar on one lot of 100 oz), EURUSD is 100,000 (one pip on one standard lot = $10). Get these right once and every computed P&L is right.
- Tags — rename or delete strategy and mistake tags.
- Data — Export all trades (CSV) and Download JSON backup (everything: accounts, trades, tags, rules, symbols, notes). Delete my account removes you and all your data; you confirm by typing your email.
- Security — change password (email accounts), change email (a verification link is sent to the new address), sign out.
12. Keyboard shortcuts
| Key | Does |
|---|---|
| N | New trade, from any page |
| / | Focus the search box on the trades page |
| Enter | Save the trade form (when the symbol list is closed) |
| Esc | Close any dialog |
13. Glossary
- Net P&L — what you made after commissions and fees.
- Gross — the price move × quantity × multiplier, before costs.
- R / R-multiple — net ÷ risk. +2R means you made twice what you risked.
- Planned R:R — the reward-to-risk you set up: distance to target ÷ distance to stop.
- Break-even (BE) — a result within ± the account's threshold; neither a win nor a loss.
- Win rate — wins ÷ (wins + losses).
- Profit factor — gross profit ÷ gross loss.
- Expectancy — the average result per trade, in R or in money.
- Payoff — average win ÷ average loss.
- Drawdown — the distance of the balance below its previous peak; max drawdown is the largest such distance in the account's history.
- Recovery factor — net ÷ max drawdown.
- Dependence — the largest win as a share of gross profit.
- Consistency — profitable days ÷ trading days.
- Discipline — trades with no mistake tag ÷ all trades.
- Session — Asia (00–07 UTC), London (07–12), New York AM (12–16), New York PM (16–21), Off hours (21–24), suggested from the opening time.
- MAE / MFE — the worst and best price reached during the trade.
- Exit efficiency — the share of the worst-to-best range the exit kept: 0 % means you got out at the worst price, 100 % at the best.
- Left on the table — what the trade was worth at its best price minus what the exit kept.
- Clean streak — consecutive trades (or trading days) without a mistake tag.