Here is the uncomfortable truth: a trader who made $840 this week can be in worse shape than a trader who lost $200. The number at the top of your report tells you what happened. The rest of the report tells you why. This guide walks through how to read every section of your weekly performance report in Trader Journal App, what to look for, and the specific adjustments to make before Monday's open.
Start With the Summary Card, But Read It Differently
When you open your weekly report in Trader Journal App, the summary card shows net P&L, win rate, total trades, and average win versus average loss. Resist the urge to judge the week by net P&L alone. Instead, read these four numbers as a set.
Example: A trader finishes the week up $840 on 22 trades with a 41% win rate. At first glance, that win rate looks weak. But the summary card also shows an average win of $310 and an average loss of $95. That is a 3.3-to-1 reward-to-risk ratio on closed trades. The math is doing the work: 9 winners at $310 average minus 13 losers at $95 average lands right around $840.
Now compare that to a trader who made $600 on 22 trades with a 73% win rate, an average win of $85, and an average loss of $160. That trader is one bad week away from giving everything back. The summary card exists so you can spot this difference in ten seconds. High win rate with a negative expectancy profile is a warning, not a victory.
Ask yourself each week: is my edge coming from win rate, from reward-to-risk, or from neither? Then check whether that matches your actual strategy.
The Equity Curve Tells You When You Made Money
Below the summary card, the weekly equity curve plots your cumulative P&L trade by trade. This chart answers a question the summary card cannot: when did the money happen?
Look for three patterns:
- Front-loaded weeks. You are up $900 by Tuesday and finish the week at $840. That means you gave back $60 in the back half of the week. Check the trade log: were those giveback trades smaller size, or were you forcing setups that were not there?
- Back-loaded recoveries. You are down $700 on Wednesday and finish up $300. This is often a red flag disguised as resilience. Scroll to Thursday and Friday in the trade log and check position sizes. If Friday's winners were double your normal size, you were likely revenge trading or oversizing to recover. The report's per-trade P&L column makes this visible.
- Steady climbs. A curve that grinds upward with shallow dips is the healthiest pattern in trading. If your week looks like this, screenshot it and note in the trade journal what you did differently.
The equity curve also shows drawdown depth. If your worst intraweek drawdown was $650 against a $840 finish, you spent the week climbing out of a hole. That is worth flagging in your weekly review notes even though the week ended green.
Win Rate and Expectancy: Read Them Together
Trader Journal App calculates expectancy per trade directly on the report: (win rate x average win) minus (loss rate x average loss). Do not skip this number. It is the single best predictor of whether your current approach compounds or bleeds.
Run the numbers on the first example above: 0.41 x $310 = $127.10, and 0.59 x $95 = $56.05. Expectancy is $71 per trade. Over 22 trades, that is roughly $1,560 of theoretical edge, and the $840 actual result means slippage, commissions, and a few outsized losses ate into it. That gap is normal, but if it is consistently large, check the trade log for trades that exceeded your planned risk.
Now the second trader: 0.73 x $85 = $62.05, and 0.27 x $160 = $43.20. Expectancy is $18.85 per trade. Positive, but thin. One $400 loss instead of a $160 average wipes out more than a week of edge.
The actionable takeaway: if your expectancy is under $25 per trade, your priority for next week is cutting average loss size, not finding more setups. Use the report's average loss figure as your benchmark and check every losing trade against it.
Average Win and Average Loss: Your Risk Discipline Check
This section of the report compares what you actually risked to what you planned to risk. Trader Journal App shows average loss per trade alongside your largest single loss of the week.
Example: Your plan says you risk 1% of a $25,000 account, which is $250 per trade. Your report shows an average loss of $180, which looks fine. But the largest loss is $610. That single trade is the story of your week. Open the trade log, find it, and read your own notes. Was it a stop that got jumped overnight? A position you added to? A trade you moved the stop on?
One oversized loss per week at $610 instead of $250 costs you $360, which is half of a good week's profit. The report surfaces it so you can fix the cause, not just note the symptom.
On the winning side, compare average win to your targets. If your plan targets 2R winners and your average win is 1.4R, you are cutting winners early. The trade log's exit notes will show whether you exited at a fixed target, trailed a stop, or bailed on emotion.
Best and Worst Trades: Find the Pattern, Not the Story
The report highlights your best and worst trades of the week with full details: entry, exit, size, and your journal notes. Do not read these as trophies and scars. Read them as a matched pair.
Ask: what did the best trade have that the worst trade lacked? Common answers the report makes visible:
- Time of day. Your best trade was at 10:15 a.m. and your worst was at 3:50 p.m. Check the trade log's timestamp column across all 22 trades. If your afternoon trades are consistently negative, that is a schedule fix, not a strategy fix.
- Setup tag. If you tag setups in Trader Journal App, the report groups performance by tag. A week where breakout trades lost $400 and pullback trades made $1,240 tells you exactly where to concentrate next week.
- Day of week. The report's day-by-day breakdown often shows one day carrying all the losses. If Fridays are red four weeks running, the data is telling you something your memory is not.
How Trader Journal App Helps
The weekly report is built from data you already logged, which means the quality of the report depends on the quality of your journaling during the week. Here is how the app's features connect:
- Automatic weekly report generation. Every Monday, the prior week's report is ready with the summary card, equity curve, expectancy, and best/worst trades already calculated. No manual tallying.
- Setup tags. Tag each trade as you log it (breakout, pullback, reversal, news). The report's tag breakdown shows P&L, win rate, and expectancy per setup, so you can see which playbook actually paid.
- Per-trade notes and screenshots. Attach your chart and a two-line note at entry and exit. The report pulls these into the best/worst trade section, so your Friday review includes your own reasoning, not just numbers.
- Risk tracking. Set your per-trade risk in settings, and the report flags any trade that exceeded it, with the dollar amount of the excess.
- Day-of-week and time-of-day breakdowns. See exactly when your edge shows up and when it disappears.
- Week-over-week comparison. The report shows last week's expectancy and average loss next to this week's, so you can tell whether the fix you made actually worked.
Turn the Report Into Three Actions
A report you read and forget is worthless. Before you close the tab, write three lines in the weekly review section:
- One thing to keep. Example: "Pullback setups, 6 trades, +$1,240. Keep taking all of them."
- One thing to cut. Example: "Trades after 3:30 p.m., 4 trades, -$410. No new entries after 3:30."
- One number to watch. Example: "Largest loss was $610 versus $250 plan. Next week, no loss over $300."
Next Monday, the week-over-week comparison in your new report tells you whether the fixes held. That loop, read, adjust, verify, is where the compounding happens.
The Bottom Line
Your weekly performance report is the cheapest coaching session you will ever get. It knows which setups paid, which hours bled, and whether your losses matched your plan. The traders who improve fastest are not the ones with the best weeks. They are the ones who read the whole report, wrote down three actions, and checked the results seven days later.
Open this week's report in Trader Journal App now. Find your largest loss, find your best setup tag, and write your three lines before you do anything else. Your next week starts with what you learn from this one.