Accounts

Trade accounts give your journal structure. They let you separate live trading, paper trading, backtesting, missed trades, brokers, and currencies so that balances and statistics remain meaningful.

A simple starting structure is:

1. Main
2. Missed Trades
3. Backtesting

Open Accounts from the main navigation to create an account, search your existing accounts, change their order, or select one to view its details.

Manage your account list

Select New and enter an account name to create another trade account. The account opens immediately so you can finish its configuration.

Drag enabled accounts by their handles to change the order used throughout your journal. Reordering is unavailable while account search is active.

The menu on an account lets you rename or delete it. Deleting an account also deletes its trades and can affect linked import profiles, so Trading Vault shows the impact and asks for additional confirmation when required. Your final remaining account cannot be deleted.

Your membership determines how many accounts can be enabled at once. Accounts beyond that limit appear under Disabled. Use Edit Enabled to choose which accounts are active without deleting their history.

Trade Account details

Select an account to open its details beside the account list. The page contains:

• Account configuration
• A lifetime performance summary
• A transaction ledger
• An Account Balance chart

The account name at the top of the details panel is editable. Changes to account settings save automatically.

Account configuration

Currency

Currency controls how the account's monetary values are recorded and formatted. Account balance, planned risk, transactions, monetary performance, and the Account Balance chart use this currency.

Choose the correct currency before adding significant history. Changing it changes how the account's existing monetary values are interpreted and displayed. It does not perform a foreign-exchange conversion of the historical amounts.

Default market

The default market is preselected when you add a trade to this account. You can still choose a different market on an individual trade.

Risk (%)

Risk is the account's configured default risk percentage. It is used with the current recorded balance to calculate Planned risk:

planned risk = current account balance * configured risk percentage

For example, a balance of $50,000 with risk set to 1% produces planned risk of $500.

This is the account's current planning value. It does not claim that every historical trade used the same risk.

Execution allocation

Execution allocation controls how closing quantities are matched with opening quantities when a trade contains multiple entries or exits:

• FIFO matches the earliest available opening quantity first
• LIFO matches the latest available opening quantity first
• Manual uses allocations managed on the trade

The allocation method affects calculated execution results for scaled trades. FIFO is the default when no more specific allocation setting exists.

Account colour

Choose a colour to make the account easier to recognize in account lists, trade filters, and other journal views.

Paper Trading A/C

Enable Paper Trading A/C for simulated, backtesting, missed-trade, or other non-live accounts. The setting identifies the account as paper trading but does not remove account functionality.

Performance summary

The Performance summary shows lifetime results for the selected account. It is not affected by the filters on the Trades pages.

Each card has an information button containing the same calculation context described below.

Account balance

Account balance is the current recorded balance after deposits, withdrawals, opening commissions, and known realized trading results:

account balance = contributions + recorded balance-changing trading results

It does not include unrealized profit or loss from an open position. The transaction ledger shows how each recorded event changed the running balance.

Planned risk

Planned risk is the current account balance multiplied by the account's configured Risk (%). It changes when the balance or risk setting changes.

Net contributions

Net contributions show how much outside capital remains in the account:

net contributions = total deposits + signed withdrawals

Withdrawals are recorded as negative amounts. A $10,000 deposit followed by a $2,000 withdrawal therefore produces $8,000 in net contributions.

Contributions affect the account balance but are not trading performance.

Trades and win rate

Trades counts closed executed trades recorded in this account. The supporting win rate follows the break-even treatment configured in your Journal Settings.

Planned, open, invalidated, and other non-closed records do not enter this lifetime trade count.

Net P&L

Net P&L is the realized profit and loss from closed trades after recorded costs and adjustments:

Net P&L = sum(observed closed-trade net profit)

It does not include deposits, withdrawals, or unrealized P&L. If closed trades do not contain enough recorded profit information, the page does not turn the unknown result into zero.

Total R

Total R adds the recorded realized R from closed trades in this account:

Total R = sum(observed closed-trade R)

R expresses the result relative to each trade's initial risk, making differently sized trades easier to review together.

Realized account return

Realized account return is the cash-flow-neutral performance of this account's recorded balance history. It follows deposits, withdrawals, commissions, and realized trading results in chronological order.

Deposits and withdrawals change the capital base but do not count as gains or losses. At each recorded time, Trading Vault applies funding changes first, combines the balance-changing execution results, and calculates the return against the balance available before that trading result:

event return = realized trading result / balance before the event

realized account return =
    (product(1 + event return) - 1) * 100

Execution results sharing the same timestamp are combined before their return is measured. This prevents an arbitrary ordering between simultaneous executions from changing the result.

Realized account return includes recorded realized trading results and commissions. It does not include unrealized or marked-to-market P&L.

Compounded trade return

Compounded trade return links every closed trade's saved return percentage sequentially:

compounded trade return =
    (product(1 + saved trade return / 100) - 1) * 100

This is the same selected-trade calculation used on the Trades and Stats pages. It does not follow deposits, withdrawals, or the timing of the actual account balance. Overlapping trades are still treated as sequential saved returns.

The tooltip reports how many closed trades have a recorded return percentage. When one or more returns are missing, the page also displays a coverage warning rather than hiding the incomplete data.

For more detail about geometric linking, see How statistics are calculated.

Why the two returns can differ

Realized account return and compounded trade return answer different questions:

The values can differ because of deposits and withdrawals, changing account size, overlapping trades, execution timing, or differences between recorded execution results and saved trade percentages. Neither value should be expected to reconcile to the other in every account.

Return availability and warnings

Trading Vault displays a warning when it cannot construct a defensible lifetime return.

Realized account return may be unavailable when:

• No account performance has been recorded yet
• A realized execution result is incomplete
• Trading activity occurs without a positive recorded balance beforehand
• An execution batch would take the recorded balance below zero
• The account reaches zero and later trading occurs after recapitalization

If an account reaches zero and is later funded again, one lifetime return cannot link the performance on both sides of that reset. Review the transaction timeline and correct missing funding or execution information where appropriate.

Compounded trade return may be incomplete when closed trades are missing saved return percentages. Its tooltip and warning show the observed trade coverage.

Deposits, withdrawals, and the transaction ledger

Use Deposit or Withdraw above the ledger to record an external cash flow. Enter the amount, date, and an optional description. The date is important because it determines the historical balance available to later executions and percentage calculations.

The totals beside the buttons show lifetime deposits and withdrawals. Withdrawals are displayed as signed negative amounts in calculations.

The ledger contains:

• Date — when the transaction or execution affected the balance
• Name — the traded instrument, or a Deposit or Withdrawal badge
• Description — the note saved with a funding transaction
• Amount — the signed balance change
• Balance — the running account balance after the event

Manual deposits and withdrawals can be edited or deleted from their action menu. Trade-generated rows come from the associated executions and must be corrected on the trade rather than edited as funding transactions.

After a funding transaction changes, Trading Vault refreshes the ledger, performance summary, account balance history, and affected trade calculations.

Account Balance chart

The Account Balance chart visualizes the same running balance history shown in the ledger. Hover over the chart to see the recorded total at a point in time.

Use the timeframe controls to change the chart grouping:

• Hour
• Day
• Week
• Month
• Quarter
• Year

You can also zoom the timeline to inspect a smaller period. Privacy mode hides monetary values while preserving the shape of the chart.

On wide layouts, the ledger and chart appear side by side. On narrower screens, they stack vertically. Both panels keep their own working area so a long transaction history scrolls inside the ledger rather than continually lengthening the page.

Keeping account performance accurate

For the most useful account history:

1. Record the opening deposit before the first execution.
2. Enter later deposits and withdrawals on their actual dates.
3. Keep execution commissions and realized results complete.
4. Save percentage returns when you want compounded trade return to match Stats coverage.
5. Review warnings instead of treating an unavailable value as zero.

Accurate cash-flow timing is especially important for realized account return because each trading event is measured against the capital recorded at that point in the account timeline.