How to Read Your Trading Journal Dashboard

By Parallax · 24 October 2026

Short answer: the Parallax Dashboard turns your trades into numbers and charts that answer four questions: how much you made, how steady it was, when it happened and how you exited. This guide goes through every panel in the order they appear: what each one measures, how it is worked out and what a high or low reading means. Every panel only describes the trades you’ve already taken; none of them tells you what to trade.

Each chart has an ⓘ in its corner with a one-line reminder, and clicking a bar, dot or cell opens the trades behind it.

A few rules that apply everywhere

The filter bar decides the trades. Account, date, symbol, side, tags and the other filters apply to every panel. The Calendar, the yearly heatmap and Yearly performance ignore the date filter so they can show whole months and years.
Win, loss or break-even is decided by a trade’s net P&L (after commissions): above 0 is a win, below 0 a loss. If you set a break-even tolerance (Settings), trades within it count as break-even. Break-even trades stay out of win rate and profit factor, but their P&L still counts in net P&L.
$ or R. The switch at the right of the filter bar shows results in dollars or in R multiples (each trade’s result ÷ the risk you took at entry). In R, trades without a stop or a risk you typed in show “—” and are left out of R totals. See What Is an R Multiple? for how R is worked out.
Days are trading days. A trade belongs to the trading day of its entry, as set in Settings → General → Dates & calendar (start time, its clock, and whether Sunday counts as Monday).
Hours are as recorded. Hour and session panels use the entry time your platform recorded, the same time shown in the trade list.

Overview

Net P&L

The big figure is the total result of the trades shown, in $ or R.
Return is net P&L ÷ the starting balances of the accounts traded (set them in Settings → Accounts & commissions). Accounts without a starting balance are left out, and the note under it says how many.
Expectancy is the average result per trade: net P&L ÷ number of trades. Positive means the trades shown made money on average.
Avg R per trade is the same average in R, for the trades that have a stop or risk.
Win rate is winners ÷ (winners + losers).
The win-rate bar has a mark at your breakeven win rate: the win rate at which your average winner and average loser would cancel out, worked out as average loss ÷ (average win + average loss). “8.2 pts above breakeven” means your win rate is 8.2 points higher than the win rate your current win and loss sizes need to break even. A low win rate with big winners can be above breakeven, and a high win rate with big losers can be below it.

Trades & profit factor

PF (profit factor) is the total of the winning trades ÷ the total of the losing trades. Above 1 means the winners added up to more than the losers; 2 means twice as much.
The count and the bars show how many trades you took on each of your last 80 trading days. Taller bars are busier days.
Avg win / loss are the average winning and average losing trade.
Contracts adds up the quantity of every trade.
Trades per day is trades ÷ days you traded.

Risk profile

These numbers look at how bumpy the results were, not only how big.

Max drawdown is the biggest fall of your running result from a high to a later low. With a starting balance it shows as a % of the balance at that high, with the dollar amount beside it. Click it to open the trades of that fall.
Current drawdown is how far your latest result is below its highest point so far. 0 means you are at a new high.
Longest drawdown is the longest time, in calendar days, from a high until the running result was back at that high (or until your last trade, if it hasn’t got back yet).
Sharpe is your average daily result in R ÷ how much it swings from day to day, scaled to a year. Weekdays you didn’t trade count as 0R. A higher Sharpe means steadier days for the same average. The app marks it Poor below 0.5, Fair below 1.5 and Good from 1.5.
Sortino works like Sharpe but only counts the losing days as swings, so big winning days don’t pull it down. Good from 2.
Calmar is your yearly result (average day × trading days in a year) ÷ max drawdown. It compares what you make in a year with the worst fall along the way. Good from 2.
Recovery (recovery factor) is net P&L ÷ max drawdown: how many times your worst fall fits into your total result. Good from 3.

Sharpe and Sortino need trades with a stop or risk (an R) and at least two days of trading; when they can’t be worked out, the tooltip says why.

Best & worst day

Win days are the days that ended in profit ÷ the days you traded.
Best day and Worst day are the days with the highest and lowest total. If a prop account’s daily loss limit is set, the worst day says when that day went over it.
Avg daily result is your total ÷ the days you traded.
Avg hold is the average time from entry to the last exit.

Balance

The line is your running result after each trade (or at the end of each day, with Per day). With a starting balance set it shows as an account balance; without one, as cumulative P&L from 0. In R it is cumulative R. All / 6M / 3M / 1M zoom into the latest months; the line still counts from your first trade. A line that rises steadily with small dips is a steadier record than one that gets to the same place in a few big jumps.

Trade execution

This panel is always in dollars. It uses each trade’s MFE (the best open profit while it was open) and MAE (the worst open loss). MAE and MFE in Trading explains both.

Exit efficiency looks at winning trades: the P&L you kept ÷ the best open profit, averaged. 60% means that on average you kept 60% of the most a winner was up.
Heat (MAE) / Room (MFE) shows the average MAE and MFE of your winners and of your losers. Winners that took as much heat as your losers, or losers that had plenty of room before turning, both show up here.
Exits near peak is the share of exits (stop-outs left out) where price went at most 10% of the whole move further your way after you left.
Avg post-exit MFE is how much further price went your way after the exit, averaged. Tracking stops when price reaches the stop, after 60 minutes or at the end of the trading day, whichever comes first.
Avg ticks win / loss is the average ticks per contract gained on winners and lost on losers.

Streaks & discipline

Winning streak and Losing streak are the most winning or losing trades in a row (a break-even trade ends a streak), with the total of that run.
Current streak is the run your latest trades are on.
Losing days in a row is the most trading days in a row that ended below 0.
Commissions and Commissions per day are what you paid in commissions on the trades shown.

Calendars

Calendar

One month of trading days. Each day shows its result and number of trades, coloured green or red, stronger for bigger days. The Wk column totals each week. The header shows the month’s net result, win rate and trades. Click a day’s result to see its trades, or anywhere else on the day for its session notes.

Yearly P&L heatmap

The last 12 months, one square per day: green for profit, red for loss, stronger for bigger days. Each month’s total sits under it, and the footer counts green and red days and names the best and worst. Clusters of red squares show the stretches that cost you.

Yearly performance

A row per year and a column per month, with each year’s total, win rate and trades. Choose how many years to show (3 by default).

Results over time

Daily P&L has a bar per trading day, green or red. The dashed line is your average day.
Drawdown shows, after each trade or at the end of each day, how far your running result was below its highest point so far. 0 means a new high; the deeper the red, the further below it.
Rolling average P&L has three lines: the average result of your last 10, 20 and 50 trades, after each trade. When the 10-trade line falls below the 50-trade line, your recent trades are doing worse than your longer average; when it is above, better.
Win rate (10-day rolling) is your win rate over the last 10 trading days, on each day. It turns red at 30% or less and green at 70% or more, and the dashed line is 50%.
P&L distribution counts how many trades ended in each range of results. Each bar starts at the value under it. A few far-right bars are big winners; a long tail to the left is big losers.

When you trade

Hour × weekday is a grid of the 24 hours by the days of the week. Each cell shows the average result per trade (or the total, with Total) of the trades entered in that hour on that weekday. Stronger green or red is a stronger result; “–” means no trades. Hours are as your platform recorded them.
Time ranges shows win rate, break-even %, average, total and profit factor for each session (Asia, London, New York AM and PM by default; right-click to change the times) or for each time range (15 minutes to 4 hours). Trades outside every session are under Other times.
P&L by weekday is the total of the trades entered on each day of the week.
P&L by time of day has a dot per trade: when it was entered, against its result.

What you trade & how you exit

Instrument P&L shows each symbol’s total, number of trades and average per trade, biggest total first. Micros can be grouped with their full-size product in Settings → Trades table & symbols.
MFE vs P&L has a dot per trade: its best open profit against its result. Dots on the dashed line kept all of it; dots far below it gave a lot back before the exit.
MAE vs P&L has a dot per trade: the most it was down while open against its result. Dots on the dashed line lost all of the heat they took; winners far to the right came back from a deep loss.

Results by value

Pick a value you record for each trade, such as RSI or ATR at entry, and this table splits your trades into ranges of it, with trades, win rate, average, total and profit factor for each range. Add values in a trade’s Values box.

Monte Carlo simulation

The simulation makes 1,000 made-up runs of your trading. Each run draws as many trades as you have, at random and with repeats, from your own results. It shows how different the same results could have looked in another order.

The band holds the middle 90% of runs (5% to 95%), and the line through it is the median run.
Worst run is the run that ended lowest.
Your trades is what actually happened.
Ruin if down sets a fall (for example $2,000, or 10R), measured from the high, like a trailing drawdown, or from the start. Ruin % is the share of runs that fell that far at some point. Set it to your prop account’s drawdown limit to see how often your own results, shuffled, would have reached it.

The same trades always give the same result, so the numbers only change when your trades do. The simulation reuses your past results; it says nothing about future markets.

Notes

A free text box for your own notes, kept in the journal. It saves as you type.