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 and an optional donate button.
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.
Pricing
Blotterbook is free to use right now and supported by donations. If it saves you money, consider chipping in — early supporters lock in lifetime access to everything that comes next.
Use the full app for free. Donate any amount to fund development.
Secure donation via PayPal. No account required to use the app.
A self-contained offline build — your data stored and processed entirely on your machine.
Coming later as a standalone app.
The hosted app you're using now, with commissions, fees, and rates fetched live.
Coming later as a subscription.
Founders get it all, free. Anyone who donates while Blotterbook is in its donation phase is locked in as a founder — lifetime access to both the online and local apps when paid tiers launch. No subscription, no second purchase, ever.
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 calls are loading the app's own reference-data JSON (brokers, fees, feeds, state tax) and the optional PayPal donate button. Use Clear data any time to 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. Re-uploading is safe: trades are de-duplicated by a stable id, so overlapping exports only add genuinely new rows. Cross-device cloud sync is the planned online tier.
It's free and donation-supported right now. Planned paid tiers are a $20 one-time lifetime local app and a $5/month online app — but anyone who donates during the donation phase becomes a founder with lifetime access to both, at no further cost.