Free trading journal template (CSV) — works with MT4/MT5, TradingView and Binance exports

A free trading journal template with the 12 columns that actually matter, why each one is there, and how to fill it from your broker export in two minutes.

Most trading journal templates fail for one reason: they ask for 30 columns, so you fill them for a week and stop. The template below has 12 columns. Eight come straight from your broker export; four are the ones only you can fill, and they are the ones that find your leaks.

Download: sharpen-journal-template.csv (trading) · sharpen-betting-template.csv (sports betting). Both open in Excel, Numbers and Google Sheets, and both import into Sharpen as-is.

The 12 columns and why each one is there

Column	Example	Why it matters
Date	2026-09-08 09:35	Everything by hour and weekday depends on it
Symbol	NQ, EURUSD, BTCUSDT	Your P&L per instrument — most people have one that only loses
Side	Long / Short	Long vs short expectancy is rarely symmetric
Size	1, 0.5 lots, 250 USDT	Revenge sizing shows up here, not in the notes
Entry price	18,412.25	Needed for R multiples and slippage
Exit price	18,438.50	Same
PnL	+149.61	Net of fees; the number everything is computed on
Fees	4.20	Fees on 40 trades a week are a leak on their own
Setup	ORB, pullback, breakout	The single most useful tag: expectancy per setup
Planned	yes / no	Was this trade in the plan before you took it?
Emotion	1–5	1 = calm, 5 = tilted. Fill it at entry, not after
Notes	"chased after 2 losses"	One sentence, only if there is something to say

The first eight are in every broker export. Setup, Planned and Emotion are what turns a trade log into a journal: they let you compare "planned entries" to "unplanned entries", "emotion 4–5" to "emotion 1–2", and setup A to setup B. That comparison is where the money is.

Filling it from your broker in two minutes

MetaTrader 4/5: Account history → right-click → Report → export, then keep the *Positions* table. Open time, symbol, type, volume, prices, commission, swap and profit map one-to-one.
TradingView: Trading panel → History → export, or Strategy Tester → *List of trades*. Combine the entry and exit rows of each trade into one line.
Binance Futures: Orders → Trade history → Export. Use *Realized PnL* as PnL, and *Fee* as fees.
Sportsbook / bet tracker: date, event, stake, odds (decimal or American), result. Stake is Size, payout minus stake is PnL.

Then add Setup, Planned and Emotion by hand for the week. Ten minutes on Sunday for 40 trades. If you journal daily instead, do it at entry: the emotion score is only honest in the moment.

What to compute (and what to ignore)

With the template filled, four numbers are worth your attention every week — formulas and a worked example in how to calculate expectancy and profit factor:

Expectancy per trade — average PnL per entry. Positive and stable is the goal; win rate alone means nothing.
Profit factor — gross profit ÷ gross loss. Below 1.0 you are paying to trade.
Expectancy by setup — the table that tells you which setup to stop trading.
Planned vs unplanned — the size of your discipline leak, in dollars.

Ignore total PnL for the week. It is mostly noise at 40 trades, and it hides the two numbers above.

Spreadsheet vs. journal app

A spreadsheet is perfect for the log. It is bad at the comparisons, because you will not rebuild ten pivot tables every Sunday. Sharpen imports this exact CSV (duplicates are skipped, so re-import every week), computes the stats, and runs ten leak detectors on your entries — tilt, revenge sizing, bad hours, unplanned entries, holding losers — each with the proof in dollars. The Free plan takes 30 entries a month; Pro is $19 for unlimited entries, all leaks and a weekly review by DM.