Trading Journal for NinjaTrader: Importing Your Trades
Short answer: export NinjaTrader 8’s Trades report as a CSV file and import it into your journal. In Parallax that’s Data → Import trades…. Every fee NinjaTrader lists comes across in the commission, scale-ins and scale-outs become one trade, and NinjaTrader’s MAE and MFE come with each trade. The one thing NinjaTrader doesn’t export is your stop price, so you add it in the journal to get R multiples.
Why NinjaTrader’s own statistics aren’t a journal
NinjaTrader’s Trade Performance window already shows your trades and statistics. What it doesn’t give you is a journal: notes and tags on each trade, a calendar of your days, screenshots, and reports that compare your setups, sessions and accounts over months. A journal keeps that history in one place, even after you change accounts or brokers.
Step by step: export from NinjaTrader 8
- In the Control Center, open New → Trade Performance.
- Pick the accounts and the dates you want.
- Set Display to Trades and click Generate.
- Right-click the list, choose Export, and save it as CSV.
- In Parallax, click Data → Import trades… and pick that file.
Use CSV, not Excel: saving to Excel can shift the times. And choose the Trades display, not Executions: the executions list has neither the fees nor MAE and MFE, so Parallax asks for the Trades export instead.
What comes across
| From NinjaTrader’s Trades export | In the journal |
|---|---|
| Entry and exit times and prices | Each trade, with every exit |
| Several rows for one position (scale-in, scale-out) | Joined into one trade, from flat to flat |
| Commission, clearing, exchange, IP and NFA fees | All in the trade’s commission, so net P&L matches NinjaTrader |
| MAE and MFE | How far price went against and for you (see MAE and MFE) |
| Sim accounts (Sim101) and demo accounts | Marked as sim |
| Stop price | Not exported: type it into the trade for R |
NinjaTrader writes one row per entry and exit pair, so a trade you added to shows up as two rows. Parallax joins rows that overlap back into one trade, the way you actually traded it. A reversal (long straight to short) becomes two trades.
Adding the stop price
R multiples (profit in units of the risk you took) need your initial stop. NinjaTrader’s export doesn’t include it, so open the trade in the journal and type the stop, or set a default risk per trade in Settings → Risk so every trade has one. More on R in What Is an R Multiple?
Importing again
Importing the same file twice is safe: trades already in your journal are skipped, and trades you deleted stay deleted. You can export a wider date range each week and only the new trades are added.
What Parallax does with your NinjaTrader trades
Once they’re in, your trades get the same tools as any other: a dashboard you arrange, a calendar of daily results, Insights that compare setups, times and markets, a simulator that replays your trades under different rules, and prop firm account tracking. Everything stays on your PC.
Parallax runs on Windows and costs $16 a month or $149 a year, with a 7-day free trial. See the journal or pricing.
NinjaTrader is a trademark of its owner. Parallax isn’t affiliated with it. Menu names are from NinjaTrader 8.