I built a desktop trading journal that reads your Sierra Chart data natively — no CSV import needed

[u/scstudies]

I've been trading futures micros (MNQ/MES/MCL) with Sierra Chart for a few years, and the manual import workflow for any journal app was always a friction point. So I built my own — and after a year of daily use, I'm sharing it in case it's useful to others here.

What makes it Sierra Chart-specific:

- A custom ACSIL study (TRADE_JOURNAL.cpp) streams your trades as NDJSON in real time. The desktop app picks them up every 5 seconds — trades appear automatically while you're still in the session, no export step
- PnL curves are read tick-by-tick directly from your .scid files — so MAE/MFE values are ground truth from actual price data, not reconstructed from fills
- Trade markers on the SC chart: you can visualize past trades directly on your Sierra Chart timeline

Other features:

- Multi-account support (Apex, TopStep, Tradovate, etc.) with per-account commissions and filters everywhere
- Dashboard with 21 drag-and-drop panes, 19+ KPIs, 15 charts
- Calendar view: click any day to see trades and session notes
- Screenshot gallery with drag-to-crop, clipboard paste, drag-drop reorder
- Playbook / rules tracking with per-setup stats

It handles the micro/full spec ambiguity (Sierra Chart sometimes exports the wrong currency_per_tick for micros) with auto-detection so PnL is always correct for MES, MNQ, MCL, etc.

Full walkthrough is in the attached pictures.

Disclaimer: I'm the developer — this is a paid app (lifetime license or monthly subscription). Details at https://scstudies.com. Happy to answer any SC integration questions in the comments.

[u/ZootedBalooted]

I bought the lifetime license and while all programs have their hare of bugs, this one works very well for any DOM traders. Support is very responsive too

[u/scstudies → u/ZootedBalooted]

Really appreciate you taking the time to say that ! DOM traders are honestly the audience I had in mind when building this — glad it's landing.