The Trade Journal is where you log every wheel trade you make — cash-secured puts, covered calls, and share positions. It tracks your profit and loss automatically and gives you a clear picture of how your account is performing.

Setting up your account

Before you start logging trades, set up your trading account. Click Set Balance and enter your starting balance (for example, $100,000). This is the amount of cash in your brokerage account.

The account bar shows you five things at a glance:

• Starting Balance — the amount you entered. Click Edit to change it anytime.
• Max % / Contract & Max % / Ticker — position sizing limits. These control the traffic light system (see Section 11).
• Current Balance — your starting balance plus your total P/L. Green means you're up, red means you're down.
• Capital Deployed — a progress bar showing how much of your account is committed to open positions. Green = under 50%, yellow = 50–75%, red = over 75%.

Below the bar you'll see performance metrics with period buttons (MTD, QTD, YTD, All) so you can see returns over different time frames.

Adding your first trade

Click + New Trade and choose your trade type. The form adapts based on what you're entering:

• Cash-Secured Put (CSP) — Enter the symbol, strike price, premium received (per share), number of contracts, fees, and expiration date.
• Covered Call (CC) — Same fields as a CSP, plus a Cover with shares dropdown to link to an existing stock position. When you link a CC, the shares automatically change to “Covered” status.
• Shares — Enter the symbol, buy price, number of shares, and (optionally) a sell price if you've already sold.

The Paste Trade shortcut

Don't want to type every field? Click Paste Trade to import directly from your broker. Copy your trade confirmation from thinkorswim or Schwab, paste it into the text box, and the Trade Journal parses everything automatically.

• One line — pre-fills the form so you can review and save.
• Multiple lines — batch-imports all trades at once.
• “TO CLOSE” lines — automatically finds your open trade by symbol, type, and strike, and records a Buy-to-Close.

Understanding the summary cards

The cards show your key performance numbers:

• Total P/L — your combined profit or loss across all trades. Green means profit, red means loss.
• Premium Collected — total option premium you've earned from selling puts and calls, after fees.
• Win Rate — percentage of closed trades that made money.
• Open / Closed Trades — how many positions are active vs. finished.
• Wins / Losses — count of profitable vs. unprofitable closed trades.
• Unrealized P/L — paper profit or loss on stock positions you still own, based on the latest closing price.

Income Breakdown

Below the summary cards, click Income Breakdown to expand a monthly premium tracker. It shows your P/L, trade count, and win rate broken down by month, with quarterly and annual subtotals.

• All (default) — shows premium from every options trade (open + closed), grouped by the date you opened the position. This gives you the full picture of income collected.
• Closed — shows P/L from closed trades only, grouped by close date. Use this for a realized-income view.

Click any month row to expand it and see the individual trades that made up that month's total — including ticker, type, contracts, strike, premium, P/L, and status.

Filtering your trades

Use the filter buttons to see specific subsets of your trades:

• Open — all active positions (includes covered shares)
• Closed — expired, bought-to-close, assigned, or called-away trades
• Shares — just your stock positions

Within each main filter, you can narrow further — for example, under Closed you can filter by just CSPs or just CCs.

The trade table

Each row in the table shows:

• Symbol — click to go to that stock's detail page. Open trades also show a colored dot for position sizing (green/yellow/red).
• Type — CSP, CC, or SHARES.
• Strike / Buy Price — the strike for options, or the price you paid for shares.
• Net Premium — for options, the premium collected minus any close cost and fees. Hover to see the full breakdown.
• P/L — profit or loss. Green badge for profit, red for loss.
• ROR / Ann. ROR — your rate of return and annualized return on this trade.
• Status — where the trade is in its lifecycle (see below).
• Actions — to edit, to delete.

Trade statuses explained

Viewing closed trades

Click the Closed filter to see all your completed trades. Each one shows the final P/L and how it was closed (expired, BTC, assigned, or called away).

The full wheel cycle

The wheel strategy follows a repeatable cycle, and the Trade Journal tracks every step:

1. Sell a CSP — log it as a new CSP trade. Status: Open.
2. It expires worthless — set status to Expired. You keep the premium. Start over with step 1.
3. Or you get assigned — change the CSP status to Assigned. A SHARES position is created automatically at your strike price.
4. Sell a covered call — add a new CC trade and link it to your shares. The shares status changes to Covered.
5. CC expires worthless — the shares revert to Open. Sell another CC (repeat step 4).
6. Shares called away — set the CC status to Called Away. The linked shares are closed. Back to step 1.

How P/L is calculated

• Options (CSP/CC) — P/L = (premium × 100 × contracts) − (close cost × 100 × contracts) − open fees − close fees.
• Shares — Realized P/L = (sell price − buy price) × shares − fees. While open, unrealized P/L is calculated from the latest closing price.

Connection to Income Planner

Everything you log in the Trade Journal flows into the Income Planner. When you enable Trade Journal Mode in the Income Planner, it pulls your real trades to calculate actual yield, account balance, and sustainability. If you withdraw money, your account balance adjusts — and the Income Planner recalculates whether your income plan is still on track.

See the Income Planner guide for the full details.

Good position sizing is what keeps one bad stock from ruining your whole account. The Trade Journal includes a built-in traffic light system that warns you when a single position — or your entire portfolio — is getting too concentrated.

How the traffic lights work

Once you set your account balance, every open trade gets a colored dot next to its symbol. The color reflects how much of your account that one stock uses across all your positions on it:

Capital deployed bar

The progress bar in the account bar shows how much of your total account is tied up in open positions:

• Green (≤ 50%) — plenty of cash for new opportunities or unexpected assignments.
• Yellow (50–75%) — getting tight. Be selective about opening new positions.
• Red (> 75%) — fully deployed. No room for dips or new setups.

Scale-in tracking

When you have multiple open CSPs on the same stock, colored dots appear next to the symbol showing your scale-in level. This helps you see how many layers deep you are:

• Level 1 — your initial entry
• Level 2 — stock dropped ~20%, you sold another CSP lower
• Level 3 — ~40% drop, another CSP (high-conviction only)
• Level 4 — maximum position. Beyond this, the stock may have fundamental problems.

Position sizing in the Calculator

The Options Calculator also uses your account size. When you analyze a potential trade, it shows:

• How much capital this trade would use and what % of your account
• Whether you already have positions on that ticker
• Your remaining buying power after the trade
• The scale-in level if you already have CSPs on that stock