Trading Ledger

Overview

A journaling skill in the tradition of the Market Wizards interviews: a written record of every trade's decision process, reviewed on a schedule. The user reports a trade in plain language — "bought 500 NVDA at 135, stop at 128, betting the post-earnings dip fills" — and the agent writes ticker, size, and price to the user's own Notion database plus the part every spreadsheet journal loses: the thesis, the plan, and the emotion. If no reason is stated, it asks on the spot, because entry reasons decay overnight. Reviews grade decision quality against the user's own plan — a per-plan loss scores better than a lucky win. Core contract: never fabricate when unsure; mark To-confirm and batch-ask.

When to Use This Skill

• Use when the user reports a trade fill ("bought 500 NVDA at 135", "closed my TSLA position", "opened 2 ES contracts short")
• Use when the user says "log a trade" or "trading ledger", or "tidy up my trading ledger"
• Use when the user asks to "review my trades"

How It Works

Step 1: Find the database (zero-config)

On the first write of a session, use Notion search to find the database (type database, not a page) whose title contains "trading-ledger". Read its data_source_id (collection://... UUID) and use it as the parent for create-pages / query for the session. More than one match → ask which.

The companion Notion template (free, linked in the source repo) ships this schema — select values are a controlled enum, copy them exactly:

• Entry (title); Ticker (text — strikes/expiries here: NVDA / NVDA 0620C150 / ESU6)
• Market (select): US Stocks / US Options / US Futures / A-Shares / HK Stocks / CN Futures / Crypto / Other
• Direction (select): Long / Short · Size (text, with units)
• Entry Price / Exit Price (number) · Entry Date / Exit Date (date — expand to "date:Entry Date:start": "YYYY-MM-DD"; a bare value fails with HTTP 400)
• Thesis (text) — the soul of the journal; if missing, ask on the spot
• Plan (text) — stop / target / contingency; ask if missing
• Emotion (select): Calm / FOMO / Panic / Revenge / Boredom / Overconfidence — tag only what the user admits or what is plain in their words; don't diagnose
• Execution (select): Per plan / Early exit / Delayed stop / Impulse / Unplanned add — filled at close
• P&L (number, realized) · Status (select): Open / Closed / To-confirm / Reviewed · Review (text) · Notes (text)

Step 2: Opening a trade

Parse → create a row with Status=Open. A missing thesis is the one field worth interrupting for — ask immediately. Anything else uncertain: record what you have, put the question in Notes, mark To-confirm.

Step 3: Closing or adjusting

Find that ticker's Status=Open row → fill Exit Price / Exit Date / P&L / Execution → set Closed. Grade Execution against the user's own Plan: stopped where planned = Per plan; ran before the target = Early exit; held through the stop = Delayed stop. No matching open row → create one marked To-confirm and ask whether the entry was never logged.

Step 4: Batch reconcile and review

• "tidy up my trading ledger" → query Status=To-confirm rows → collect all open questions into one message.
• "review my trades" → query recent Closed + all Open rows. For each closed trade, three questions: Did the thesis play out? (wrong thesis + profit = luck — say so). How was the execution? (a per-plan loss is a good trade). What share of trades were emotion-tagged? Write conclusions into Review, move Closed → Reviewed, and for every open position ask: does the entry thesis still hold today?

Parsing rules: infer Market from symbol and context (ambiguous → ask); bought put = Short exposure + note it is a long put; record only given prices/sizes — never look up market prices to fill gaps; "today" = the user's local trading date — confirm before writing.

Examples

Example 1: Opening with a missing plan

User:  picked up some TSM July calls this morning, same thesis as before earnings
Agent: Logged ✅ TSM July calls · Long · Open
       ❓ To-confirm: which strike/expiry, how many contracts, at what price?
       ❓ And the plan — holding through earnings, or is there a stop?
User:  0731 475C, 1 contract at 18.50, holding to earnings
Agent: Updated ✅ Ticker: TSM 0731C475 · Thesis: pre-earnings run-up · Plan: hold through earnings

Example 2: Review day

User:  review my trades
Agent: 3 closed since last review:
       · NVDA long — thesis played out, exited per plan. Good trade.
       · TSLA short — thesis wrong, but stopped exactly where planned. Good trade, bad outcome.
       · SPY calls — profitable, but Entry was tagged FOMO and there was no plan. Lucky, not good.
       Open positions: TSM call — earnings run-up thesis still holds until the 7/29 print.

Best Practices

• ✅ Ask for the thesis at entry time — it decays overnight and memory flatters
• ✅ Grade execution against the user's own plan, never against hindsight
• ✅ Batch all questions into one message; give a short receipt after logging
• ❌ Don't compute P&L you are unsure of — options and futures have multipliers; use the user's numbers
• ❌ Don't invent select values; copy the enum
• ❌ A review is not a P&L total — it grades thesis and execution

Limitations

• Requires the user's own Notion workspace, the companion database (duplicate the template from the source repo), and the official Notion connector granted access — connector/skill setups currently live on paid Claude tiers.
• Close, reconcile, and review flows require reliable Notion database query/search access to open, closed, and To-confirm rows. If the connector cannot query the ledger, stop after logging the user's new facts and ask them to provide the relevant row details instead of guessing matches.
• No broker integration, by design: the broker knows the fills; only the user knows the reasons. The user must self-report.
• Grading honesty depends on input honesty: a thesis backfilled three days later defeats the point (the skill nags, but cannot prevent it).

Security & Safety Notes

• Mutation scope: writes and updates rows only in the single user-granted Notion database via the official Notion connector (MCP) — no shell commands, no network fetches, no market-data lookups, no credentials.
• This skill must never produce trading signals, price data, or buy/sell recommendations. It records and mirrors the user's own decisions; the review asks questions, it does not advise. Nothing it writes is financial advice, and it should say so if asked for a recommendation.
• On claude.ai, Notion's write tools default to needs approval — the first write pops an approval prompt; expected, not a hang.

Common Pitfalls

• Problem: Notion API 400 on date fields. Solution: Expand to "date:Entry Date:start": "YYYY-MM-DD".
• Problem: create-pages succeeds but the date column is empty (known Notion MCP issue: notion-mcp-server#121 — expanded date fields silently dropped). Solution: After the session's first create, read the row back; if the date is empty, fill it with update-page.
• Problem: Close matched to the wrong row when the same ticker was traded twice. Solution: Match on Status=Open + ticker; if multiple open rows match, ask which one.
• Problem: Overnight US fills dated to the wrong day for non-US users. Solution: Overnight fills belong to the US trading date; confirm the date before writing.

Related Skills

• @time-ledger - The same "parse plain language → own Notion DB → ask instead of guessing" pattern applied to time tracking.