Notion trading journal template: fields to include and how to automate it

A template gives you the structure, not the data. Here is what a good Notion trading journal contains and how to fill it without typing.

What a good Notion trading journal contains

Notion is flexible enough to hold a proper trade log, and many traders already use it for everything else. A good trading journal in Notion has two linked databases: one row per day and one row per trade.

The trade database: fields to include

The daily database

One row per trading day with date, account, result, number of trades, win rate, starting and ending balance and maximum drawdown, plus a notes field. A calendar view of this database shows good and bad stretches at a glance.

The problem with a template

A template gives you the structure. It does not give you the data. Notion has no link to your MetaTrader 5 account, so with a template alone you type every trade in by hand. That works for a while, and then days get skipped, which is the failure mode every manual journal shares. See why a trading journal needs automation.

Filling a Notion journal automatically from MT5

If you connect Notion, AI Trading Journal builds both databases for you in your own Notion workspace, with the fields above, and then copies each closed MT5 trade into them about every 5 minutes. Your Notes field is never overwritten, so your comments stay safe when the sync runs again.

It is a Windows app, MT5 only, with a 7-day free trial and a one-time $19.99 price. The setup is described in how to journal MT5 trades in Notion automatically.

Views worth adding in Notion

• Calendar of days from the daily database, to see good and bad stretches.
• Trades by symbol grouped view with the sum of profit per symbol.
• Trades by weekday to see whether one day keeps costing you.
• Plan broken filtered view of trades where you answered no, to review them together.
• Biggest losses table sorted by profit ascending, limited to the worst ten.

Building the template yourself

• Create two databases and add the fields above.
• Relate the trades database to the daily database with a relation property.
• Add a calendar view of the daily database and a table view of trades sorted by close time.
• Add a rollup on the daily database for number of trades and total profit.
• Add a weekly review page, for example from the weekly trading review checklist.

Template or automatic journal?

• A template is enough if you take a handful of trades a week and enjoy owning the structure.
• An automatic journal is worth it if you trade daily and do not want gaps. Compare in Notion template vs automatic Notion journal.

Related Notion guides: Notion for traders, the free Notion trading journal template (CSV), the Notion forex trading journal template, the Notion trading dashboard, the Notion trading plan template and the Notion backtesting template.

An honest note on privacy. Notion is itself a cloud service, so your trades do sit on Notion's servers, in your own workspace, under your own account and token. What AI Trading Journal removes is the extra middleman: there is no separate journal vendor holding your trades and no broker login sent to a website. No tool is risk-free, so protect your accounts, including Notion if you connect it, with a strong password and two-step verification.

This page is general education about record keeping. It is not trading or investment advice.

Sample rows (hypothetical)

Each row is one closed position. The Notes column is where your own judgement goes, and it is the first thing to look at when you review the week.

Setting up the relation between days and trades

• In the daily database, create a property of type Relation pointing to the trades database. Notion offers to create the matching property on the trades side as well. Accept it.
• In the daily database, add Rollup properties: one that counts the related trades, one that sums their Profit/Loss.
• Add a formula in the trades database that labels each trade Win or Loss from the sign of Profit/Loss, so you can group and count them.
• Add a Date property to the daily database and use it for the Calendar view.
• When you add a trade, set its Day relation, or use a filter and a template that sets it for you.

Doing the relation by hand for every trade is part of why template journals fall behind. When the trades are written automatically, the relation to the correct day is part of what the app does.

Useful touches

• Screenshots. Drag a chart image into the page of a trade. A picture of the setup is often worth more than the notes.
• Mobile. The Notion mobile app lets you add a note to a trade from your phone, which is a practical way to write the reason right after an exit.
• Yearly archive. Once a year, export the database to CSV and filter the main view to the current year, so the page stays quick and you have a copy of each year.
• Templates inside the database. A database template for a new trade can fill the structure of your notes: setup, reason, emotion, what to change.

Checking the template against reality

After the first week, pick three trades and check them against the MT5 History tab: symbol, volume, times, prices and profit. A template journal is only as good as what was typed into it, and one transposed digit in a lot size will distort your statistics. If you find errors, consider whether the typing is the weak link and whether automating it would be worth the cost. See the Notion template versus an automatic Notion journal comparison, and the free CSV template if you want to start with something ready-made.

Frequently asked questions

Related guides

• A local trading journal for MT5
• P&L calendar for MT5
• Trade notes, ratings and screenshots
• Trading progress and goals
• Back up your journal and move it to a new PC
• An offline trading journal for Windows
• How to set monthly trading goals
• Import your whole MT5 history
• How to tag trades
• Trade screenshots for your journal
• All trading journal comparisons