Importing trades from CSV, Excel or MetaTrader

Already keeping a journal in Excel, or have a trade history from your broker, exchange or another journal? Import it into your Luxabit journal and your statistics and Discipline Score cover your past trades from day one. Importing is part of every plan, including the free Starter plan.

What you can import

• CSV, with commas, semicolons or tabs between the columns, as Excel, Google Sheets and most journals and brokers write it.
• Excel workbooks (.xlsx). Luxabit reads the first sheet. Old Excel files (.xls) can't be read: in Excel, choose Save as and pick Excel workbook (.xlsx) or CSV.
• HTML reports, such as the trade history report of MetaTrader 5. See From MetaTrader 5 or cTrader below.
• Luxabit's own CSV export, so you can move your journal back in.

One file holds up to 5,000 trades. Have more? Split the file and import the parts one by one.

Your file is read in your browser. Only the trades you choose to import are saved in your journal; the file itself is not uploaded.

How it works

1. In your journal, click Import and choose your file.
2. Check the header row. Luxabit finds the row with the column names itself, also when a report has account details or a title above it. If it picked the wrong row, choose another.
3. Check the columns. Luxabit matches the columns it recognises by their name, in English and Dutch (for example Symbol, Side, Entry price, Stop, Exit, Qty, Fee, Datum, Richting, Instapprijs). Check each one and pick a column for anything it missed, or choose not in file.
4. Check numbers and dates. Luxabit sees whether your file writes 1,234.56 or 1.234,56, whether dates are day-month-year or month-day-year, which timezone the times are in and whether sizes are in lots. You can change each of them.
5. Look at the preview. You see how many trades are ready, the first few as they will appear, and which rows can't be imported and why, with their row number in your file.
6. Click Import. Imported trades are marked Import in your journal.

Changed your mind, or picked the wrong column? Right after importing, Undo import removes exactly the trades that import added.

The columns

Only the instrument and the entry price are required. Everything else is optional, but the more you bring, the more your journal can measure:

• Direction (long or short; buy and sell work too). Not in your file? Luxabit derives it from the stop-loss (below the entry is a long), the take-profit, or the profit and the exit price. A negative size also counts as a short.
• Opened and closed. ISO dates, day-month-year and month-day-year, with or without a time, Excel dates and Unix timestamps all work. A time without a timezone is read in the timezone you pick, by default that of your trading plan. When a column name gives the timezone, such as Opening Time (UTC+0), Luxabit picks it for you.
• Entry, exit, stop-loss and take-profit. Currency signs, units and thousands separators are ignored. A stop-loss or take-profit of 0 counts as none.
• More take-profits, for trades that take profit in steps: up to 4, each with the size it closes, in the same unit as the size column. Luxabit recognises the columns of its own export (take_profit_2, take_profit_1_quantity and so on) and names such as TP2 and TP2 size; for other names, open More take-profits and pick the columns. Together the sizes can't be more than the position. Whether each take-profit was hit is not imported.
• Size and fees, for your profit and loss. Negative fees, as many exports write them, are read as costs. Sizes in lots (a column named Volume or Lots, or cells such as 0.10 Lots, for forex, metals, index CFDs and oil) are turned into units with the usual contract size; see the position size calculator. An instrument Luxabit doesn't recognise then gets no size, so no profit and loss in money, but its result in R still counts.
• Swap is added to your fees: a negative swap is a cost, a positive one a credit.
• Profit / loss. Luxabit doesn't store it, but uses it to work out the exit price when your file has none: exit = entry ± (profit + fees) ÷ size.
• Result in R and risk as a % of your account.
• Timeframe, strategy / setup, tags and notes. Tags are matched to Luxabit's own tags by their name (for example FOMO or Early exit); others are left out.

From MetaTrader 5 or cTrader

• MetaTrader 5: in the History tab, right-click, choose Report and save it as HTML or Open XML (Excel). Luxabit reads the Positions table: the first Time and Price are the open, the second ones the close. The orders and deals below it are left out. MetaTrader writes your broker's server time, so pick that timezone under numbers and dates.
• cTrader: export your history as CSV or Excel, and import that file.

Luxabit recognises these exports by their published layout. Brokers and versions can differ, so always check the columns and the preview before you import.

How imported trades are recorded

• A trade with an exit price, a result in R or a close time is closed; one without is open. A closed trade without a close time is dated by its open time.
• Realised R, win or loss and your statistics are calculated just as for trades you log yourself. See How results are calculated.
• Without a stop-loss, a trade has no R and counts as "stop-loss set: not met" in your Discipline Score, as in the rest of the journal.
• Imported trades have no answers to your own rules and no playbook yet. Open a trade to choose its playbook, tick your rules and add tags, so your Discipline Score and patterns cover them. Luxabit also suggests tags where your history points to them.
• An imported trade gets no post-trade review by itself. Want one? Closed trades with a result in R have a Review button in the list; a review counts toward your monthly reviews.

Importing the same file again

Every imported trade is recognised by its instrument, direction, times, prices and size. Import the same file again, or a newer version with more rows, and only the trades that aren't in your journal yet are added. Two identical rows in one file are imported as two trades.

What you get from your history, per plan

Importing works the same on every plan. What Luxabit shows you from your imported history follows your plan:

• Starter: your full journal with statistics, equity curve, calendar and Discipline Score over all imported trades.
• Trader and Pro: also patterns: what following or breaking your rules, your tags, the time of day and each setup meant for your results in R.

See Plans and pricing. Your past results describe your past trades; they say nothing about future ones.