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.
Cost intelligence
Flip commission tiers and data feeds; watch your net move across your real history.
Tax planning
A Section 1256 blend on positive net profit, by state — know it long before April.
Business budgeting
Subscriptions + commissions become a break-even-per-trade and a clear cost waterfall.
Discipline & review
Day-notes, equity-curve markup, and stats by session and weekday to find your edge.
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.
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.