The Free Futures Trading Journal for ES, NQ and CL Traders
Log every futures trade with setup, session and confluence tags. Mistake Cost Analysis, Trader DNA and 60+ analytics views track your ES, NQ, CL and futures edge by contract, session and setup combination — giving you clear data on where your futures edge is strongest. Free to start. Updated 12 October 2026.
What is a futures trading journal?
A futures trading journal records each trade in contracts, ticks and dollars, with the contract, entry time, fees and the reason for the trade. It shows how your results change by contract, time of day and setup, and how close you are to a daily loss limit or a trailing drawdown.
The free .xlsx template for futures traders is further down.
Futures trading — ES, NQ, CL, GC, 6E — involves defined contract specs, margin requirements and session times that make discipline tracking especially important. Knowing your actual edge per contract, per session window and per setup is the foundation of consistent futures performance. Without a structured journal, it's easy to confuse edge with favourable market conditions.
The Trading Terminal supports any futures instrument. Tag each trade with its contract, session, setup and confluence combination. Trader DNA breaks performance by instrument (ES vs NQ vs CL), by session (RTH vs Globex) and by setup. Mistake Cost Analysis quantifies the cost of specific futures errors — trading Globex sessions you historically underperform, holding positions through economic releases, sizing too large on range-bound days. With 60+ analytics views and a 0–100 Edge Score, you get a complete picture of your futures edge. If you trade on Tradovate, the Tradovate trading journal page shows how to import your trade history by CSV.
What You Get
Trade Journal
Log every trade with entry, exit, R:R, setup tags, confluences, screenshots, emotion ratings and trade grading. CSV import included.
60+ Analytics Views
Mistake Cost Analysis, Trader DNA, 0–100 Edge Score, setup win rate, session performance, confluence charts and more.
Risk Desk
Daily risk budget, distance-to-breach bars with alerts at 70% and 90%, trailing drawdown tracking. Works on live, demo and prop firm accounts.
Trade Lab
Named strategy tracking with best conditions and danger zones. Compare multiple strategies side by side.
Built for Every Account Type, Including Prop Firms
Futures accounts, including futures prop firm evaluations, often come with daily loss limits and trailing drawdown rules. Risk Desk tracks the daily loss limit and drawdown you enter from your closed trades, on any account type, with alert banners at 70% and 90% consumed. It does not track firm-specific rules such as consistency requirements. Accounts manager keeps each evaluation pass separate from funded accounts.
How does a futures trade turn into ticks and dollars?
Futures are measured in ticks, the smallest price move a contract makes, and each tick has a dollar value that depends on the contract. The two together, multiplied by the number of contracts, give the result. Here is one fictional trade, which is also the first row of the template:
| Item | ES long, 2 contracts |
|---|---|
| Entry, stop, target, exit | 5,000.00 / 4,996.00 / 5,008.00 / 5,006.00 |
| Tick size and tick value | 0.25 index points, $12.50 per tick |
| Result in ticks | 24 ticks (6 points / 0.25) |
| Gross P&L | 24 x $12.50 x 2 contracts = $600 |
| Commissions and fees | $4.60 |
| Net P&L | $595.40 |
| Risk at the stop | 16 ticks x $12.50 x 2 = $400 |
| Result in R | 1.49R |
Other contracts have different tick sizes and values, and brokers can differ on fees, so the template asks you to enter your own tick size and tick value rather than assuming them.
What should a futures trading journal track?
- Contract and expiry month. ES and NQ behave differently, and a journal that lumps them together hides it. Log the contract name as the instrument.
- Number of contracts. Size is the lever that most often changes a trading day, so record it on every trade.
- Time of day. The session the journal assigns comes from your entry time and timezone. For a strict regular-hours versus overnight split, note it in the trade or in a custom tag (Pro).
- Fees and slippage. A stop-market order can fill several ticks beyond the stop. Compare your planned risk with the actual loss on stopped trades.
- Daily loss and drawdown. On accounts with a daily limit or a trailing drawdown, the running total matters as much as any trade. See static vs trailing drawdown for how those floors work.
Which mistakes does a futures trading journal catch?
- Adding contracts to a loser. Scaling into a position that is moving against you shows up as a loss larger than 1R on a trade whose planned risk was smaller.
- Sizing up after a good day. Plot contracts per trade over time and the step up is easy to see.
- Trading through scheduled data. Flag trades open at a release and compare them with the rest.
- Ignoring slippage. If actual losses regularly exceed planned risk, the stop placement or the order type needs a second look.
- Overtrading the open. Many traders take their fastest, least planned trades in the first minutes of a session. Entry time makes that testable in your own data.
Mistake Cost Analysis (Pro) adds up the net P&L of the trades carrying each tag, so each habit becomes a figure. It describes what those trades produced, not what they would have made without the mistake.
Is there a free futures trading journal?
Yes. On the Trading Terminal's Free plan, futures traders get the full journal and dashboard for 1 account at A$0 with no card: up to 30 trades per calendar month, 90 days of dashboard history and CSV import and export. A Tradovate export imports with its own preset; there is no direct Tradovate connection, and platforms without a preset can use the generic layout. A high-volume futures trader will reach 30 trades quickly, and unlimited trades are on Pro.
The free futures trading journal template has no trade cap. It takes the contract, number of contracts, tick size and tick value, then calculates the result in ticks, gross and net P&L, risk at the stop, planned R:R and the result in R. Its Summary sheet shows total ticks, average ticks per trade, total commissions and fees, and results by contract, session and setup.
Download the futures trading journal template (.xlsx)
Free, no sign-up, no macros. Row 6 is the fictional ES trade above: overwrite it. In Google Sheets use File > Import > Upload. See also the trading journal template and the free trading journal page.