the_desk — Where edges are forged

01

Getting Started — Your First Import

the_desk works by importing your broker's trade data. No API keys, no live connections — just export a file from your broker and drop it in.

1 Click Import broker file in the sidebar (or hamburger menu on mobile)

2 Select a .csv or .xlsx file from your broker

3 Choose which account to import into (or create a new one)

4 the_desk auto-detects your broker format and imports all trades

💡 Supported formats: Project X, cTrader/Dominion Markets, legacy FIFO fills, and old Google Sheets journals. More coming soon.

02

The Sidebar — Your Command Center

The left sidebar (desktop) or bottom nav (mobile) has everything:

Dashboard
Overview of your performance — P&L, win rate, profit factor, and breakdown grids

Journal
Sortable trade table with inline editing for setups and entry types

Calendar
Monthly view with daily P&L coloring and weekly summaries. Click any day to write session notes

Analytics
Deep dives — best hours, best days, and breakdowns by every dimension

💡 On mobile: Tap the ☰ hamburger button (top-right) to access Import, Backup, Restore, and other actions. Tap "Accounts" in the bottom nav to switch accounts.

03

Accounts — Combine vs Funded

the_desk is built for prop firm traders running multiple accounts simultaneously.

• Combine — challenge/evaluation accounts (marked amber)

• Funded — live funded accounts (marked green)

Use the quick filters in the sidebar (All / Comb / Fund) to view data across account groups, or click a specific account to drill into just that one.

💡 Copy trader? If you copy trades across multiple accounts, they won't be deduped — each account keeps its own records, so you see the full picture per account.

04

Adding & Editing Trades

Click + Add Trade to manually log a trade, or import from your broker. Each trade can include:

Core data
Symbol, direction, entry/exit price, size, gross P&L, fees

Strategy
Setup type, entry type, execution timeframe, HTF confirmations

Screenshots
Multi-timeframe chart images (Monthly → 1m)

Reflection
Trade grade (A+/A/B/C), emotional state, and free-form notes

In the Journal table, you can edit Setup and Entry Type directly with the inline dropdowns — no need to open the full form for quick tagging.

💡 Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+Z to undo, Ctrl+Shift+Z to redo. Works for deletes, edits, and imports — up to 30 steps back.

05

Rating & Emotion — Track Your Psychology

Two of the most powerful fields in your journal:

📊 Trade Rating (A+/A/B/C) — Rate the quality of your execution, not the outcome. An A+ trade followed your rules perfectly, even if it lost. A C trade was impulsive, even if it won. Over time, the "P&L by Rating" breakdown shows whether discipline correlates with profit.

😤 Emotion — Select your mental state when you took the trade: Confident, Calm, Neutral, Anxious, FOMO, Revenge, Frustrated, Tired, Overexcited, or Bored. The "Win Rate by Emotion" breakdown will show you exactly which states cost you money.

💡 The goal: When you see data like "Win rate drops from 60% to 18% when trading frustrated," it becomes much easier to walk away from the screen. Data beats willpower.

06

The Daily Journal — Session Notes

Below the calendar, you'll find a daily journal textarea. This is your space to write freely about each session — separate from per-trade notes.

• Defaults to today's date. Click any day on the calendar to switch.

• Auto-saves as you type — no save button needed.

• Great for pre-market plans, post-session reviews, or noting market conditions.

💡 Weekly habit: Every Friday, scroll through the week's journal entries and look for patterns. "I wrote 'tired' three times this week — maybe I need to skip the early London session."

07

Calendar — Reading Your Month at a Glance

The calendar colors each day green (profitable) or red (losing), with the dollar amount inside. The last column shows weekly P&L summaries.

Use the ‹ › arrows to navigate months, or click Today to jump back to the current month. The header shows your month's total P&L and trade count.

💡 On mobile: The Saturday column becomes the weekly summary (since futures don't trade weekends). On desktop, the weekly column is a separate 8th column.

08

Analytics — Finding Your Edge

The Analytics view shows everything the Dashboard doesn't have room for:

• Best Hours (local) — which hours of the day are most profitable

• Best Days — which weekdays perform best

• P&L by Entry Type / Setup / Emotion / Rating

• Win Rate by Setup / Emotion

💡 Pro tip: If a setup has a high win rate but low P&L, you're cutting winners too early. If it has low win rate but high P&L, your winners are big enough to compensate — keep trading it.

09

Multi-Device Sync — Your Journal Everywhere

Sync your journal across all your devices — laptop, phone, tablet — with a simple email and password account.

1 Open Settings → Account & Sync → Sign up with your email and password

2 Check your email for a confirmation link and click it

3 Log in — your data is pushed to the cloud automatically

4 On your second device, open the_desk → Settings → Log in with the same email and password

Once logged in, every change you make pushes to the cloud automatically. When you open the_desk on another device, it pulls the latest version. You can also tap the sync indicator in the topbar clock area to manually pull.

Forgot your password? On the login screen, enter your email and tap "Forgot password?" — a reset link will be sent to your inbox.

💡 Your account is private. Each user can only access their own data. No one — not even the developers — can read your journal without your login credentials.

10

Strategies / Playbook — Document Your Edge

The Strategies view (between Journal and Calendar in the sidebar) is your trading playbook. Each setup you trade gets its own card with live performance stats.

Grid view
Cards for each setup showing win rate (with donut ring), net P&L, profit factor, expectancy, avg winner/loser, and a description preview

Detail page
Click a card to see full stats, your written description, rules checklist, example screenshots, and notes

To build your playbook: click into a setup → hit Edit → write a description of the setup, add your entry rules as a checklist, upload example chart screenshots, and add any notes. The analytics update live as you tag more trades with that setup.

💡 The more trades you tag, the more powerful the playbook becomes. With 50+ tagged trades per setup, the "best session" and "best day" stats become statistically meaningful — you'll see exactly when and where each setup performs best.

11

Quick Actions — Tag Trades in Seconds

You don't need to open the full edit modal to tag trades. The journal table has inline quick actions:

📷 Camera icon — tap to add screenshots (with timeframe picker). If screenshots already exist, opens a gallery first where you can view, delete, or add more.

A+ Grade badge — click to cycle through A+ → A → B → C → clear. One tap per change, no modal.

😤 Emotion badge — click to open a popover with all emotions. Tap one to set, tap again to change.

Clipboard paste: In the Journal view, press Ctrl+V with a chart screenshot on your clipboard. Pick which trade to attach it to, choose the timeframe, done. No file picker needed.

Quick Review wizard: When you have untagged trades, a banner appears: "8 untagged trades — review them now?" Tap it to walk through each trade one by one in a card-swipe interface, tagging setup, grade, emotion, notes, and screenshots as you go.

💡 The Quick Review wizard turns a 15-minute tagging session into 3 minutes. Import your broker file, hit Quick Review, and tag every trade before the session context fades from memory.

12

Data Safety — Preventing Loss & Leaks

Your trading journal contains sensitive data. Here's how to protect it:

Preventing data loss:

1 Create an account — this is your best defense. Even if your phone breaks, your data is in the cloud and you can log in on any device to restore it.

2 Weekly JSON backups — tap Backup every Friday after your weekly review. Store the file in Google Drive, iCloud, or Dropbox. This is your nuclear-option recovery if sync ever fails.

3 Don't clear browser data — your local journal lives in the browser's storage. Clearing cookies/data deletes it. If you must clear, back up first.

4 iOS users: open the app at least once a week. Safari on iPhone can reclaim storage from apps you haven't opened in 7+ days. Regular use prevents this. If it happens, logging in will restore your data from the cloud.

Preventing data leaks:

🔒 Use a strong password for your the_desk account — at least 8 characters with mixed case and numbers.

🔒 Use Streamer Mode before going live. It blurs all P&L, trade sizes, and account info. Toggle with Ctrl+Shift+H or in Settings.

🔒 Don't share your login credentials. Each account is private — only you can access your data.

🔒 If you suspect your account is compromised, change your password immediately via Settings → Account & Sync or the "Forgot password?" flow on the login screen.

💡 The golden rule: Account + weekly backup + streamer mode for streams. If you follow all three, your data is safe from loss, safe from leaks, and recoverable from any scenario — including losing your phone, switching devices, or accidentally clearing browser data.

13

Streamer Mode — Trade Journals on Camera

If you stream your trading or share screens during mentorship calls, Streamer Mode blurs sensitive data. You choose exactly what to hide:

☑ P&L numbers — all profit/loss values across dashboard, journal, calendar, strategies

☑ Stat card values — win rate, profit factor, expectancy, etc.

☑ Trade sizes & fees — position sizes and fee amounts in the journal table

☑ Sync code — your account email in Settings

☐ Account names — your combine/funded account labels (off by default)

Configure which items to blur in Settings → Streamer Mode using the checkboxes. Then toggle the whole thing on/off with Ctrl+Shift+H (keyboard shortcut) or the Enable/Disable button. A pulsing 🔴 LIVE indicator appears at the top of the screen so you remember it's on.

Setup names, trade grades, emotions, chart screenshots, and journal notes always remain visible — these are the things you'd want to discuss on stream.

💡 Before going live: configure your checkboxes once (they persist), then just hit Ctrl+Shift+H to activate. Scroll through Dashboard and Journal to verify. After the session, Ctrl+Shift+H again to reveal everything.

14

Backup & Restore

Even with sync enabled, JSON backups are your insurance policy.

1 Click Backup → downloads a dated JSON file with all trades, accounts, setups, strategy details, and journal entries

2 Click Restore → upload a backup file. Choose Merge (adds new data, skips duplicates) or Replace (wipes current data, loads backup)

💡 Backup + Account work independently. If sync is corrupted, restore from your JSON backup. If your JSON backup is old, log in to pull from cloud. Having both means you'd need two simultaneous failures to lose data — which is extremely unlikely.

15

Themes — Make It Yours

Open Settings and pick from 5 themes:

Light

Midnight

Dark

Sunset

OLED

!!

Quick Start Checklist

☐ Import your first broker file

☐ Tag 5 trades with a Setup and Entry Type

☐ Grade 5 trades (A+/A/B/C) and set an emotion

☐ Write your first daily journal entry (tap a day on the calendar)

☐ Open the Strategies view and write a description for one setup

☐ Check the Dashboard and Analytics for your first insights

☐ Create an account and log in to enable cloud sync

☐ Back up your data (JSON download)

☐ Pick your favorite theme

☐ Try Streamer Mode (Ctrl+Shift+H) to see what it hides