TraderMemosFirst steps
From the setup wizard to your first reviewed trade — a tour of the app for new users.
You've got it running — here's the path from empty instance to a journal that tells you something.
1. The setup wizard
On first visit, TraderMemos detects an empty database and shows a one-time setup:
- Owner account — a login name and password (min 10 characters). This is the admin;
public registration stays closed afterwards unless you enable
TM_ALLOW_REGISTRATION. - Trading account — name (default Main), currency, and starting balance. The balance becomes an Opening balance deposit in your cash ledger.
- Optional import — drop a CSV or a TraderMemos JSON backup to seed the journal, or skip and start empty. You can always import later.
Every new user starts with nine common playbook setups (Pullback, Breakout, Reversal, …) — rename or replace them under Playbook.
2. Get trades in
Three ways, mix freely:
- Connect a broker —
/connect— Find my broker on the Import page, or Connect broker on an account's page — opens a searchable broker catalogue grouped Auto-sync / File import / Manual. Pick yours, choose or create the account inline, then follow that broker's export steps — or, for Interactive Brokers, enter the Flex Query and the first sync runs straight away. - Import a broker CSV — the fastest way to a populated journal. See Importing trades.
- New Trade (hotkey
ct) — manual entry with execution rows, setup, tags, emotion, screenshots, and notes. With AI features enabled, Scan to fill extracts the fills from a broker screenshot. - Automate it — IBKR accounts auto-sync on a schedule via a Flex Query, set up from
/connector the Interactive Brokers · Flex sync card on the account's page. - Just exploring? Seed ~200 realistic demo trades:
make demo-seed API=http://localhost:3000/api/v1 EMAIL=you@example.com PASSWORD='…'
Fills are grouped into trades automatically (scale-ins and scale-outs included), and duplicates are always skipped — so nothing here can double-count.
3. Find your way around
| Page | Hotkey | What it's for |
|---|---|---|
| Home | G H | Equity curve, P&L hero, streaks, expectancy, goal pacing |
| Today | G D | The trading day on one page — routine, desk (daily-loss guardrail, open risk), session P&L, missed trades, daily log |
| Trades | G T | The trade log — filter, sort, drill into fills and journal detail |
| Calendar | G C | Daily P&L heatmap with weekly totals and drill-down |
| Reports | G S | Expectancy, SQN, Kelly %, Monte Carlo, execution quality; setup / hourly / session breakdowns |
| Notes | G N | Freeform notes and daily logs |
| Playbook | G P | Your setups, each linked to the trades that used it |
| Calculator | G R | R-multiple & FVG trade planner |
| Import | G I | Import & export |
| Settings | ⌘ , | Profile (password, two-factor), General (language, timezones, theme), Shortcuts, Accounts, Rules & alerts, Journal, AI, API tokens, Sharing, Users, About (version, backups) |
⌘K opens the command palette from anywhere. Pages without a hotkey live there too:
Routines and Missed trades (both also open from Today) and the Review inbox
(/review). The Tools menu holds the rest — position size, Kelly, currency converter,
R-multiple & FVG, advanced chart, replay, economic calendar, and Year Wrapped. Every binding
is remappable in Settings → Shortcuts.
4. Build the review habit
The journal pays off in the loop, not the log:
- Start each session on Today (
GD) — tick the routine, watch the daily-loss guardrail, log the trades you passed on as missed trades. See Daily workflow. - Clear the review inbox — every closed trade from the last 14 days without an execution
grade waits in Review (
/review, linked from Today), one trade at a time. Tag the setup, mistakes and emotion while you're there — untagged trades can't teach you anything. - Write the weekly review — every Saturday the server drafts a review note with the week's numbers. The bullets you write under Focus for next week become This week's focus on Today and on mobile Home, and Reports → Behavior tracks how often you kept it. See Weekly review.
- Let the numbers judge your setups — Playbook sorts setups by verdict (Edge, Promising, Watch, Too early, Execution leak, Bleeding) with an expectancy interval, so four lucky trades don't pass for an edge. Reports adds the mistake tax and Edge Score — see Analytics.
- Set guardrails — Settings → Rules holds risk limits (max risk per trade, max daily
loss) that the New Trade compliance check enforces, an annual goal the Dashboard paces, and
the alerts that warn you (Alerts & sharing). The
position-size calculator (
⌘⇧P) sizes off your account equity and default risk %.
5. Before you rely on it
Two minutes of ops hygiene for real data:
- Production hardening — JWT secret and TLS: Deploy
- Automatic backups: Backup & restore