My “All In – Options Trading Journal Spreadsheet”

Do you feel you are struggling to review and analyse your options trading results and statistics? Do you genuinely know your trading numbers? Why do so many option traders underperform or even fail? Why are so many unprofitable?
It’s simple – they don’t know their portfolio numbers. And trading is a numbers game… !

How can you increase your trading profits when you don’t even know what your portfolio delta, strategy distribution, rolling rate, theta ratio, max trade allocation % are … to name a few important parameters of your options positions.
How to be confident to have your account managing parameters and numbers correctly?
How can you improve your trading strategy based on relevant trading statistics, parameter goals and profit targets?

Without a dedicated tracking tool you are trading without an exact “number-based compass”, without any guidance in your trading actions. And very likely you are missing out on a higher profit all together.

After creating the 2023 Options Trading Journal Spreadsheet and the making the 2023 Trading Options Wheel Strategy Spreadsheet, I have combined best features of both spreadsheets into a new and improved “All In Options Trading Journal Spreadsheet” for Google Sheets and MS Excel, integrating all possible option trading activities together with a powerful filter possibilities for analysing the trade results.

Let me introduce you to the All In Trading Options Journal Spreadsheet, the only Trading Options Spreadsheet that will EASILY track & report your realised and unrealised profit, your portfolio parameters, let you analyse your trading history, your current account situation and it even recommends actions based on your own trader profile and set parameters. It simply helps you to focus on your trading and helps you to become a highly profitable option trader.

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Unlike any other tool or spreadsheet, the EASY “All In Trading Options Journal Spreadsheet” is the ONLY option trading journal designed to focus on parameter-based options trading and account management.
Being a probabilistic-dedicated options trader myself, with years of experience under my belt, I have designed this spreadsheet with that specific purpose and goal in mind, to fit exactly the needs of option traders.

a new and improved "All In Options Trading Journal Spreadsheet", integrating all possible option trading activities together with a powerful filter possibilities for analysing the trade results.

If you are, after reading these explanations, still unsure that this tool will do every single thing you need it to do?
Our extensive, demo videos and step-by-step How to video tutorials will show you exactly how the tool works: https://www.youtube.com/@tradingoptionsforcashflow

On top of all of this, just by watching the training videos accompanied with this tool, you will actually learn how you can develop a more deliberate option strategy AND know where you can improve your trading.

Main features (New and Improved)

This spreadsheet is an indispensable tool for successfully tracking my trades and is particularly tailored to options trading, but it encompasses a comprehensive range of features:

  • New : Improved and comprehensive trade entry (buying or selling, all option strategies and stock trades) with colourised indications for mandatory fields
  • New : Track multiple trade accounts – with individual portfolio parameters, setting management alerts
  • Multiple traders
  • New :Enhanced Portfolio Summary – Automatic calculation of portfolio parameters + colourised indicators , based on
  • Use Theta, Delta and Max allocation % parameters to guide the trade actions
  • New : Improved Portfolio History and evolution over time
  • New : Improved powerful filter feature for filtering results based on selection of period, account, trader, stock and wheel strategy group
  • New : Results overview completed with automatic generated overview of open positions
  • New : Popular Options Wheel Strategy fully included in Trade Entry Journal
  • New : Separate Wheel Strategy Results and Parameters Dashboard, allowing filtering by stock and Wheel group ID
  • Spreadsheet User Interface build and improved based on my daily use – Easy-to use designed interface that works exactly as the user expects it to.
  • Financial feature : Available for purchase in our shop for less than the price of one winning option trade

Reasons to keep an options trading and tracking journal

Why do I keep a trading journal? And why should you? Let me repeat why I believe every trader needs a trading journal.

Ever since I’ve started trading options, I have been tracking my results in an own made spreadsheet to see what has worked for me and what didn’t. An options trading journal has allowed me to easily check my results and filter all the data to review my actions.

Although I must admit that keeping my Option Trading Journal up to date after every trading day requires discipline, it has absolutely improved my performance because collecting the data made me review and reflect about every trade even more. Without tracking trading data, I would’t know exactly what is working and what is not. It helps me to re-assess my option positions, and find the spots where I can and need to improve, and let’s me reflect of my upcoming action and trading plan.

The journal will become a perfect trading history logbook for reviewing strategies and past mistakes and successes. I have been tweaking this last, new and improved spreadsheet completely to my liking and now it helps me to track my positions, to review my results, filtered for a specific period or stock and to take actions by calculating triggers and indicating colour alerts whenever required.

Here I will illustrate the benefits of starting an option trading journal and I will show what data I find useful to track. Beginning option traders should start a trading journal right from the start, because I am convinced it is simply one of the most effective ways to improve your trading performance.

Start your own option trading and tracking journal today

It is not very hard to create and maintain your own personal trading journal, it is entirely up to you how familiarised you are with spreadsheets and the use of spreadsheet formulas, either in Google sheets or in Microsoft Excel, of course.

My options trading journal is very intuitive and self-explanatory. The last fully integrated version is called :“All In Trading Options Portfolio Spreadsheet” because it is really customised to my premium selling way of options trading, integrating all possible option trading activities together with a powerful filter possibilities for analysing the trade results. I am sure it will fit also the way of trading of many other option traders.

This article, together with the video demonstrating the option trading journal, will allow you to have your own journal up and running by the end of today. And you can further customise it to your liking, if you want, so that it works for you.

If you prefer watching explanations on YouTube, you can go here (with plenty of demo and how to videos) : https://www.youtube.com/@tradingoptionsforcashflow/

Screenshots and explanations of the Trading Options Journal Spreadsheet

Readers interested in the fields I track with my options trading journal can find the relevant fields and explanations below. With the goals of the journal in mind I have data entry fields and I have created also calculated fields.

There are 6 spreadsheet tabs in the spreadsheet :

  • User profile Data
  • Journal
  • Portfolio
  • Results Report
  • Wheel Strategy Report
  • Back End Data

Let’s take a look and start with the journal.

Spreadsheet “Journal” – Data Entry Structure

The “Journal” structure is designed to ensure relevant and accurate trade entry for further tracking and analysis.

The journal comprises 4 parts : Opening parameters, Current parameters, Closing parameters and Trade Results, with plenty of fields for data entry, and plenty calculated fields automating essential parameters per trade (such as days till expiration, Margin %, unrealised profit and loss (P&L), and percentage ROC,…

The spreadsheet versatility extends to selling and buying stocks besides selling and buying options. Data entry for trading incorporates various crucial fields, such as date, expirations, prices, size, fees, strategy, additional notes….

Some fields are dropdown fields with the data linked to the list in the Back End Data tab fields or Back Ens Stock data tab fields. Coloured fields will indicate if cells are ones that you manually need to edit or not, or if they are calculated automatically.

Data fields relevant for opening a new option position

a new and improved "All In Options Trading Journal Spreadsheet", integrating all possible option trading activities together with a powerful filter possibilities for analysing the trade results.

Let’s take a look at data entry for a new trade, opening a new position :

  • Date Log Entry : is the transaction date (or log date) which can be different form the initial open date when the transaction is an adjustment to the option contract (eg rolling out in time or adjusting the strikes).
  • Date Init Opening : is the actual date that the option contract was opened or the new position was established.
  • Acc ID : You create and select up different account IDs to track.
  • Trader ID : You create and select up different trader IDs to track.
  • Action : the type of Transaction (STO or BTO for options, sell or buy Shares, deposit or withdraw cash or receive dividend)
  • Option Strategy : dropdown choice of the selected option strategy of the trade, such as put, call, strangle, iron condor, iron fly, call spread, put spread, jade lizard and big lizard…
  • Part Wheel? : to select if the trade is part of a Wheel Strategy for the stock
  • Wheel ID : To give a specific ID (to choose) to group all rows of the same wheel strategy group
  • Ticker : is the ticker symbol for the stock underlying the option contract, used to identify the stock on the stock exchanges and relevant websites such as Yahoo finance.
  • Share price at Trans : is the underlying stock price at the moment the position is opened on the transaction date.
  • Credit Debit : calculated field, indicating if the transaction will be a credit or debit
  • Strategy Description : I use this field to make a brief description of the trade is that I can quickly identify the trade.
  • Exp Date : is the expiration date meaning the date that the contracted is scheduled to end.
  • Strike Price : is the set price of the option contract at which the underlying stock can be bought or sold when it is exercised.
  • Qty : stand for the quantity of contracts for the new opened position (in my case practically always just one, because I follow the principle trade often trade small).
  • Trans Price (premium) : is the transaction price (premium received – credit when selling to open – since contracts are transacted in increments of 100 shares, when I enter the option premium of $1.23 in this field, I actually have received $123 in premium).
  • Tot Fees : Total Fees and Commissions, and is the amount that has to be paid to your brokerage for executing the transaction.
  • IVR Open : is the Implied Volatility Rank of the stock at the moment the position is opened on the transaction date.
  • Spy B Delta : The delta (SPY Beta weighted) of the option at opening – interesting parameter to follow up the evolution of the total portfolio delta.
  • PoP % : stands for Probability of Profit and it gives expressed in percentage the expected chance that the trade will have a positive result, will be a winner.
  • MgnReq BPR @Open : calculated % that checks if the % of the position is not higher that the set percentage in the portfolio goals.
  • Initial DTE : stands for Initial days till Expiration, and is the amount of days left on the option contract, at the moment the position is opened on the transaction date.
  • Opening Amount : calculated field of the opening transaction

Here is a extensive video demonstrating in detail how trades are entered into the journal (you can always go back to rewatch):

Data fields relevant for following the option positions

a new and improved "All In Options Trading Journal Spreadsheet", integrating all possible option trading activities together with a powerful filter possibilities for analysing the trade results.

  • Position Status : to select the actual status of the position (Open, Closed, Assigned, Rolled) – this field allows for correct calculations in the spreadsheet
  • Current Price to Close : is the current option price. Updating the premium price will adjust the alert triggers that I use in the spreadsheet.
  • Current MgnReq-BPR :
  • Current SPY B Delta : is current delta (SPY Beta weighted) of the option to follow up the evolution of the total portfolio delta.
  • Current MgnReq-BPR % NetLiq :
  • Unrealised PL : is the actual Current Net Profit/Loss based on the value the current premium.
  • % MaxProfit : is the percentage of the maximum possible profit that is calculated based on the current premium. This field helps to determine if you want to manage a positions based on the targets (eg. close at 50% Max Profit or close at -200% loss)
  • DTE : stands for Days unTil Expiration and is the amount of days left on the option contract, at current date (today). This parameter is used to trigger alerts to manage the position (eg. if DTE < 21 days -> action may return a “manage” alert).
  • Recommended Position Action : is the field that expresses the different triggers to “wait” or to “manage” the position based on a couple of target variables

Data fields relevant for closing an option position

a new and improved "All In Options Trading Journal Spreadsheet", integrating all possible option trading activities together with a powerful filter possibilities for analysing the trade results.
  • Date Closed : is the position closing date (or log date) – it can be different from the closing date when the transaction is an adjustment to the option contract (eg rolling out in time or adjusting the strikes), the it’s more a rolling date
  • Trans Type : stands for the Transaction Close Type and is the type of Transaction to Close a position is either Buy to Close (BTC) or Sell to Close (STC) or ROLL when rolling the position.
  • Price UL : is the underlying stock price at the moment the position is closed on the transaction date.
  • IVR Close : is the Implied Volatility Rank of the stock at the moment the position is closed on the transaction date.
  • Qty : stand for the quantity of contracts for the closed position (in my case practically always just one). If a partial close is made, a new position must be opened with the remaining quantity.
  • Closing Price : stands for premium or stock pice paid (debit for buying back to close) or received to close the position.
  • Close Fee : Total Fee and Commissions, and is the amount that has to be paid to your brokerage for executing the closing transaction.
  • Days Held : is the calculated field of the number of days between the opening and closing of the position.
  • Closing Amount : calculated field of the closing transaction
  • Notes : a field used for any useful comment for later review.
  • Net P/L : is (a calculated filed) of the realised net profit or loss
  • ROC % : is (a calculated filed) of the realised return on investment expressed in percentage for the net profit made on the investment cost in the field margin requirement.
  • Ann ROC % : is (a calculated field) of the realised, non-compounded annualised return on investment expressed in percentage for the net profit made on the investment cost in the field margin requirement, taken into account the number of days the position was held.

Portfolio results with powerful filter possibilities (period – trader – account – stock – wheel)

I have this super handy and powerful filter to create periodic results report that filter automatically the required data from the main table, based on the period, the trader ID, the account ID, the stock and wheel trades. I will show and explain more in my youtube video about the wheel trade

a new and improved "All In Options Trading Journal Spreadsheet", integrating all possible option trading activities together with a powerful filter possibilities for analysing the trade results.

The Portfolio Summary Tab

This tab allows to update the Net Liq and Theta parameters of the portfolio.
The user can set the Min and Max goals for Theta and Delta.
The table in blue is fully calculated based on the input of the other tables, and will indicate whether the portfolio meets the set goals or not by colouring the fields green or red.

a new and improved "All In Options Trading Journal Spreadsheet", integrating all possible option trading activities together with a powerful filter possibilities for analysing the trade results.

The User profile Tab

Multiple Accounts for different traders can be set up.

Defining the portfolio parameters (Max portfolio Allocation %, Max % of Margin-BP per trade, Manage at DTE, Early Manage %, Stop-Loss %, Theta Goals and Delta Goals),as you can see in the table below.

a new and improved "All In Options Trading Journal Spreadsheet", integrating all possible option trading activities together with a powerful filter possibilities for analysing the trade results.

Although most users, will quickly find their way, I do advise to take a look at our explanation videos on our Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@tradingoptionsforcashflow/

And if you have any specific questions, please do take a look at the FAQ Page about the use of our spreadsheets.

Start Your Path to Profitability Today: Get Started and Get Ahead

Let me remind you that, as option traders, we invest a lot of time in planning our trades and managing our option positions. Keeping track of our option trading records, in a great and easy to manage journal, is probably one of the most important and crucial steps for every trader to become a highly profitable option trader.

Thinking about the price? A dedicated spreadsheet tool like this one pays for itself!

This spreadsheet is available FOR LESS than the price of one winning option trade (!) This makes that the tool will easily pay for itself multiple times, and which could make it your highest returning investment this year!

This new, improved and fully customised spreadsheet, that I use daily, is created in Google Sheets and Excel is a ready-for-use and is a digital download:

Remember, this is more than just a fancy tool or spreadsheet. This product can save your options trading career, as it does for me every day!

Cheers

K & P

Comments or suggestions

Please feel free to give me your thoughts, suggestions and questions about the All In Options Trading journal in the comment section below.

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Peter Klatt
Peter Klatt
6 months ago

Hi,
Your spreadsheet looks great!
I wonder how you introduce adjustments of open positions. Do you use the same approach as for rolling?
Thanks & best regards,
Peter

Raju
Raju
6 months ago

Looks pretty good. I have few questions/suggestions:
1. Is it possible for me to automate trading fees entry. No charge for stock/ETF trades and either $0.50 or $0.65 per option contract (could set this up in user account setup table).
2. Add a trade type of “DRIP” as that would be different from cash dividend, I think.
3. “Expired” selection type in close section and it fills up date and price. Also, good to see how many times the rolls expired
4. I would like to see a table of all my open stocks, original cost price, adjusted cost price, today’s stock price from google finance, sparkline graph to view the trend easily. I will try to add it myself, though may need pointers on how to extract data from the trade journal.
5. Would it make sense to add “Exp” for expired trades in the trade journal. saves some data entry and some stats on how many times I let trades expire.
6. Is it possible to show an example of a day trade entry. I have seen several trading journals that give wrong results for ROI/ROC and annualized returns.
7. Would love to add dashboards with charts and graphs and other stats graphically.

Thanks.