CapitaLog

CapitaLog is a planning, review and analytics tool for discretionary trading. It supports the full loop: write a plan before entering a position, record the trades that follow, and review the results by strategy and by conviction.

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Motivation

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For a discretionary trader, keeping good records is itself an edge. A written plan makes an idea reviewable, and an honest review is what turns a set of trades into feedback. Most journals record trades after the fact. CapitaLog records the plan first, then attaches the trades to it, so that when a position closes the outcome can be compared against the conviction and the risk that were set beforehand.

Features

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Strategy templates

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Different strategies need to record different things. A breakout setup has an entry, a stop and a catalyst; an iron condor has an underlying range and four legs with strikes. CapitaLog lets you define a template per strategy with its own fields, including nested and repeating ones, rather than fitting every strategy into one fixed form.

Each template is tagged with a methodology (technical, fundamental, macro/catalyst, quantitative) and a style (momentum, reversion, relative value, volatility), which is what makes performance comparable across strategies later. Templates are versioned: changing the fields creates a new version, and existing plans keep the version they were created with. Individual fields can be marked read-only, so parts of a thesis cannot be edited after the trade.

Trade plans

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A plan holds a strategy template, a conviction level, a capital allocation, and a trade idea document written before the position is opened. Plans move across a board with four states: draft, not started, in progress, and finished or abandoned.

A plan becomes “in progress” when a trade is linked to it, not by a manual action, so its state reflects the actual position. Finishing a plan requires all positions to be closed and a written review to be attached before the profit and loss is recorded. Abandoning a plan records a reason from a fixed list, which keeps dropped ideas in the record instead of leaving a gap.

Risk management

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Position sizing is set within an evaluation cycle: a period with a fixed starting capital and a risk framework defined at the start.

For each conviction level, you set the share of initial capital and the share of realized profit that a single plan may risk. A plan’s absolute risk follows from those percentages, and the total across all open plans is checked against the cycle’s budget on submission, so the framework cannot be exceeded by accident. When a position is in profit, its risk can be released to free capacity for new plans while keeping the risk the plan was originally assigned, which keeps the R-multiple figures consistent.

Conviction and risk parameters are fixed once a plan is submitted, so the analytics that group results by conviction reflect the decision made before the outcome was known.

Broker statement import

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Daily data entry is where most journals are abandoned, so CapitaLog reads broker files directly. Uploading a settlement statement produces the day’s fund movements, executions and end-of-day positions, which can be reviewed and corrected before saving. Executions are then linked to plans in bulk rather than one at a time.

The day’s data is checked for consistency: deposits and withdrawals across accounts must net to zero, each account’s closing equity must follow from the previous day plus the day’s activity, and a position that has no recorded origin is rejected rather than saved. Before anything is written, a preview shows the account snapshots the entry will produce, along with the plans that are about to move to in progress. Data entry is final once submitted, so the preview is the point at which mistakes are caught.

Cash equity, exchange-traded stock options, and futures with futures options are supported together, each valued according to how its market settles.

Plan timeline

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Each plan keeps a full history: the snapshot as it was created, the trade idea document, every field edit with its previous and new values, status changes, the executions linked to it, the review document, and the abandon reason where applicable.

The timeline also charts the plan’s profit and loss by trading day over its whole life, so a result is not reduced to a single closing number. This shows, for example, whether a profitable plan spent time underwater along the way.

Dashboard and analytics

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The dashboard covers both account performance and the review process.

For the account, it shows an equity curve as return with drawdown on a shared axis, change rates over standard windows, and a performance overview with total net value and the profit and loss from trades made outside any plan. The overview links to a page where each account’s snapshot on any past date can be checked against the broker.

For the process, it shows cumulative profit and loss by strategy, monthly results, and four analytics for reviewing discretionary decisions:

• R-multiple distribution: results in units of the risk taken, which allows a large position and a small one to be compared.
• Conviction versus reality: outcomes grouped by the conviction assigned beforehand, with win rate and profit factor per group.
• Holding period versus efficiency: one point per finished plan, relating time held to result.
• Rolling expectancy: expectancy in R over a moving window, by conviction level.

Past cycles remain available in a read-only view, so a previous period’s dashboard, plans and risk framework stay as they were.

Status

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CapitaLog is a personal tool built to product standards, and its data model, validation and analytics are designed to support multiple users without change. It is in daily use against real broker statements. The interface is available in Chinese and English.

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