A fast, private futures trading journal and true-cost dashboard. Import your broker CSV and see real, after-cost, after-tax performance — everything runs in your browser.
Features
Blotterbook turns a raw broker export into an honest picture of your trading — gross, net of every fee, and after an estimated tax bill. No accounts, no uploads, no dependencies.
Your CSV is parsed and stored entirely in your browser via IndexedDB. Trade data never leaves the page — the only network calls are the app's own reference data.
Per-symbol, broker-aware commissions plus CME exchange, clearing, and NFA fees are modeled on every round turn — so Net and Take-home reflect what you actually keep, not gross PnL.
A Section 1256 estimate blends 60/40 long/short-term federal rates with your state's top marginal rate, applied only to positive net profit. Pick your state and see take-home update instantly.
Model AMP, EdgeClear, Tradovate / NinjaTrader, Optimus, thinkorswim, Interactive Brokers, and TradeStation. Switch broker or data feed and watch the cost — and your net — change.
A cumulative performance graph with Gross / Net / Take-home overlays and hover detail, plus a Sunday-first monthly calendar of daily PnL with weekly summaries and day-notes.
Filter by date, symbol, side, session (RTH/ETH), and weekday. Keep day-notes per session. Read expectancy, profit factor, drawdown, streaks, and an illustrative Sharpe — all after costs.
Use Cases
Most journals tell you what you made. Blotterbook tells you what you keep — and helps you plan the business of trading around it.
Cost intelligence
Before you switch brokers, see it. Flip between commission tiers and data-feed plans and watch exactly how each one moves your net and take-home across your actual trade history — not a marketing calculator.
Tax planning
Pick your state and Blotterbook applies a Section 1256 blended rate to your positive net profit on the fly. Know roughly what you'll owe — and what's truly yours — long before April.
Business budgeting
Monthly platform and data-feed subscriptions plus per-trade commissions roll into a break-even-per-trade figure and a clear cost waterfall, so you can budget your trading like the business it is.
Discipline & review
Mark up the equity curve, leave day-notes on the calendar, and slice performance by session and weekday. The advanced stats surface your best and worst days, streaks, and long/short split.
Supported platforms
Blotterbook auto-detects your export's format and normalizes it — your broker is a separate, cost-only setting. TradingView is verified against real exports; the others are in beta, built from each platform's documented format and exercised with synthetic test data. Step-by-step export guides live in the How To.
Tested on real exports Beta — built from docs & synthetic tests; verify the numbers
Pricing
Blotterbook is free for everyone — the whole CSV-driven app, no account, nothing uploaded. If it saves you money, back the project with an optional donation. Cross-device synced workspaces are coming as a low-cost add-on.
The full app, free for everyone — no account, nothing uploaded, runs in your browser.
No sign-up required to use the app.
Pay-what-helps support that keeps Blotterbook free and funds new features.
Donations open soon — secure checkout via Stripe.
End-to-end-encrypted sync of your trades, notes, tags & saved filters across devices.
Not ready yet — on the roadmap.
FAQ
Blotterbook is deliberately honest about what it does and doesn't measure. Here's the straight version.
It reads a balance-history CSV exported from TradingView. Required columns are Time, Realized PnL (value), and Action; each row is treated as one position-close event. Everything is parsed and stored locally in your browser via IndexedDB — your trade data never leaves the page.
No account, no sign-up, nothing uploaded. The only outbound network call is loading the app's own reference-data JSON (brokers, fees, feeds, state tax). Use Manage data any time to back up, edit, or wipe everything stored in your browser.
For each symbol, the all-in per-side cost is the broker's commission (micro or standard tier) plus the CME exchange, clearing, and NFA fee. A round turn is two sides. Broker rates come from editable reference data, so they can be kept current and may drift from your real fills — they're a close model, not your statement.
It uses a Section 1256 model: a blended rate of 60% long-term and 40% short-term federal rates plus your selected state's top marginal rate, applied to net pre-tax profit only when positive. It's a rough planning estimate to gauge take-home — not tax advice, and not a substitute for a professional.
Modeled brokers include AMP, EdgeClear, Tradovate / NinjaTrader, Optimus, Charles Schwab (thinkorswim), Interactive Brokers, and TradeStation. Instruments are CME futures, reduced to a root ticker (for example MESM2025 becomes MES). Unknown symbols fall back to a default fee and are flagged.
Drawdown is realized-only from the closed-trade curve, with no open-position heat. The export carries close timestamps only, so holding time isn't derivable. Calendar-day and RTH/ETH session grouping use the literal timestamp, not the CME session day. Sharpe is illustrative — daily PnL, population standard deviation, not annualized.
Not today. Local storage is per-browser, so data isn't synced across devices and is cleared if you clear site data — keep your original CSV or a backup. Re-uploading is safe: trades are de-duplicated by a stable id, so overlapping exports only add genuinely new rows. Cross-device synced workspaces (end-to-end encrypted, ~$5/month) are the one planned paid add-on — see Pricing.
The app is free for everyone and stays free. You can optionally back the project with a $25 one-time or $50/year donation (checkout via Stripe, coming soon). The only planned paid feature is synced workspaces — end-to-end-encrypted cross-device sync at about $5/month — which isn't ready yet. Nothing else is gated.