Trading journal for futures
Journaling futures is not journaling forex with different symbols. Fees are counted per contract, a session opens the evening before the day it settles on, and an import that ignores either produces wrong statistics without ever showing an error.
What futures break in a generic journal
- The session day. A futures session opened at 11pm settles the next day. Deriving the date from the entry timestamp files a whole evening under the wrong one — skewing every per-day and per-session statistic, and every daily-loss calculation in a challenge.
- Commissions. They are billed per contract, separately from the gross P&L. A journal that stores the gross overstates your performance by exactly that much, permanently.
- Fills, not trades. A fills export lists entries and exits separately. Without pairing, a position scalped in four goes counts as four trades.
What Altiora does about all three
- TopstepX: the Trades-tab export gives one line per closed round trip. Altiora reads the `TradeDay` column — the session day TopstepX has already resolved — rather than deriving it from the entry time, and subtracts fees from the gross P&L.
- Tradovate: fills are paired into complete round trips and commissions netted off, so the figure stored is the net one that drives your statistics.
- Open positions: a row with an empty P&L is skipped rather than imported as a flat zero, so your win rate is not diluted by trades that have not happened yet.
- Funded accounts: the Topstep and Apex rule presets track the trailing drawdown and the consistency rule from your imported trades.
Feature-by-feature comparison
Only the criteria that matter for this use case are shown here. The full table, across all eleven criteria, lives on the general comparison.
| Feature | Altiora | TradeZella | TradesViz | Edgewonk | TraderSync | Tradervue |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trading journal | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| CSV import | Yes | Yes | Yes | To verify | To verify | To verify |
| Prop firm tracking | Yes | Yes | Yes | To verify | To verify | To verify |
| Backtesting | Yes | Yes | Yes | To verify | Yes | To verify |
| Bar-by-bar replay | Yes | Yes | Yes | To verify | Yes | To verify |
| Risk calculator | Yes | Yes | To verify | To verify | To verify | To verify |
Cells marked “to verify” are points we could not confirm on the vendor’s own site. We would rather leave them empty than guess: a comparison is only worth reading if every cell is traceable.
← See the full comparisonFrequently asked questions
Which trading journal works with Tradovate?
Altiora imports the Tradovate CSV export: fills are paired into complete round trips and commissions netted off the P&L. Import is file-based; there is no live Tradovate connection.
Which trading journal works with TopstepX?
Altiora imports the TopstepX Trades-tab export. Fees are subtracted from the gross P&L and the futures session day is honoured, so an evening session is filed under the day it settles on.
Are futures commissions accounted for?
Yes. On Tradovate as on TopstepX, the figure stored is the net P&L, commissions and fees deducted. Every statistic follows from it.
Can I track a funded futures account?
Yes. The prop firm module ships presets for Topstep and Apex, both futures firms, covering the trailing drawdown and the consistency rule. Any other firm can be tracked by entering your own thresholds.
Other use cases
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