What a spreadsheet does well
A spreadsheet is free, flexible and fully yours. You decide the columns, you can start today, and for recording trades and a few basic numbers it works fine. Many good traders kept their first journal in Excel or Google Sheets.
Where a spreadsheet falls short
The problems appear once you journal every day:
- Every field is filled in by hand, so typos and missing values creep in
- Formulas break when you add a column or a new setup
- Fields don't talk to each other: linking your sleep or mood to your results takes work you rarely do
- Nothing checks you at the moment you enter a trade, so your rules stay on paper
- The more fields you add, the more often you skip the journal altogether
Notion and other all-in-one tools
Notion and similar tools are more flexible than a spreadsheet, and there are plenty of templates. The catch is the setup: building databases, relations and views takes many hours, and the result often still doesn't quite work the way you want. You end up maintaining a tool instead of reviewing your trading.
What a dedicated app adds
A trading journal app is built for one job, so the structure is already there:
- Statistics per setup, ticker, direction and time of day without formulas
- Your plan, your trade and your review linked to each other
- Checklists and warnings while you log, when it matters
- Mindset, sleep and events combined with your results
- A weekly overview you don't have to assemble yourself
Import or log by hand?
Many journal apps import trades from your broker. That saves time, but an import can't capture what you planned or how you felt. If automatic import is a must for you, choose an import-based journal. Strebell deliberately doesn't import: you log each trade in the moment, because that's the only time your feeling is accurate.
How to choose
Neither option is right for everyone:
- A spreadsheet suits you if you trade a few times a week, want to start for free and enjoy building your own system
- An app suits you if you trade daily, want to link mindset to results, keep breaking your own rules, or tried a spreadsheet and stopped using it
- Not sure yet? Start on paper with a template for a few weeks and see which questions you want answered