Trading-day workflow for active swing traders

One app for the whole trading day.

Size the next idea against your risk budget. Track open risk as you scale in and out. Close the day in 30 seconds. Then review every trade on the chart it actually traded, against your own rules.

A fresh install opens the full sample automatically, with no account, no card, none of your data. The 30-day clock starts only on your first edit or import.

Imports Thinkorswim/Schwab & Fidelity CSVs for equities & ETFs One SQLite file on your disk; no account, no cloud One-time, not a subscription macOS, Windows & Linux · Windows via the Microsoft Store, signed by Microsoft 43-topic searchable Help Center, fully offline Get the mail when a release lands
CrucibleTrade · Reports · Overview All accounts
The Reports Overview tab: net return, time-weighted return, profit factor, a 56.8% win rate that names the 10 near-breakeven scratches diluting it and shows a 58.9% decisive-only rate beside it, win/loss streak and R-multiples, above a realized P/L curve with max and current drawdown.
30 sec
To close out the trading day
11
Report lenses after the close
282
Trades in the bundled sample
0
Bytes of your trading data sent anywhere

Journals start after the close. CrucibleTrade replaces the sizing spreadsheet you run during the day and the subscription journal you visit after it.

Act I Before the open · the Planner

An entry and a stop become a share count

Tomorrow's ideas go in a grid. Type the entry and the stop, pick how much of the account's risk budget the idea gets, and the share count is already there. No spreadsheet, no arithmetic at 9:28.

  • Entry + stop + risk mode → shares, instantly: one account risk unit, half a unit, or a custom dollar or percent amount.
  • The setup's own playbook rules sit beside the plan. The rules you wrote for a breakout are on screen while you plan a breakout.
  • A focus list for the handful of names you're actually watching, kept apart from the full idea grid.
  • Track-record signals from your own history, such as "you're 4-for-5 on this setup," read straight off the trades you already journaled.
  • A pre-trade reminder built from your own analytics: mistake hot-spots, your best setup windows, and your weekday edge, one click from the plan notes.
  • Mark an idea "Entered" and it becomes a tracked trade carrying its stop, setup, and thesis. Or just import the broker CSV afterwards and let the matcher rebuild it.
CrucibleTrade · Planner · where the sizing math lives
The Planner: a cockpit strip carrying open P/L, open risk and what the book is worth if every stop fills, then tiles for open ideas, 30-day playbook adherence, and each account's risk budget with its status badge, above the open-positions book and a scale-out panel showing the selected NVDL position's 1R price and its P/L if stopped.
Act II During the day · the open book

Know your open risk without a spreadsheet

This is the hour incumbent journals skip. Positions are on, you're scaling in and out, and the question is not what your P/L was last month. It's how much you have at risk right now, and whether you should be adding at all.

  • One cockpit strip across the top: open P/L, open risk, and where the whole book lands if every working stop fills, on screen wherever you are in the Planner. A position whose risk can't be measured is said out loud rather than counted as zero: open risk reads "at least" and names how many are unmeasured.
  • The open-position book: every open trade on any date, with its current stop, its initial risk, and what it's costing or making.
  • A scale-in / scale-out ledger that keeps track of what you've banked and what's still on.
  • Break-even in one click: move the stop to your average entry and watch the trade stop being able to hurt you.
  • "Risk left" per account: how much of today's, this week's, and this month's risk budget you have already committed.
  • One throttle per account: Clear → Caution → Cool-down → Locked, blending your losing streak, recent R, open risk, and your own period limits. It warns and sizes new ideas down to half a risk unit. It never blocks an entry. This is a journal, not a broker.
  • Prices refresh when you ask for them, and only if you asked for prices at all. Downloads ship switched off; type or paste your own marks and open P/L, open risk and the throttle all work with no feed and no connection. Turn downloads on and one click updates the book. Either way there's no streaming tape here, and no market-data subscription to buy.
CrucibleTrade · Planner · the throttle and the risk budget
Planner account tiles: each with its status badge, its open risk against budget, its day, week and month new-risk limits and how much of each is used, and a 'new ideas → ½ Acct RU' directive. Under them is a cockpit strip reading open P/L $2,085.30, open risk at least $6,032.46 with one position unmeasured, −$4,022.16 if stopped, a close-the-day chip, and Enter Prices / Update Prices beside a prices-current dot.

Stops move. Your R math shouldn't lie.

The moment you trail a stop, a tool that measures R against the current stop quietly rewrites your whole track record. Every expectancy number downstream is then wrong, and it's wrong in the flattering direction.

01 · R STAYS HONEST

R stays anchored to your initial stop. The denominator never quietly rewrites itself when you trail.

02 · SPLIT STOPS

Split a stop across up to three lots: trail one, park one at break-even.

03 · WORST CASE

The worst case recomputes as you scale out. Know the moment a trade can't hurt you.

CrucibleTrade · Planner · a split stop, mid-scale-out
Planner open-position book with a split stop on one row: two legs at two prices in its Current Stop column, and its Stop P/L beside them. Above is the scale-out panel for that position: shares still open against the original size, average entry, current price, open P/L, the 1R level measured off the initial stop, and the P/L if that stop is hit. Beside them are the accounts and their status badges.

Mid-scale-out: part of the original size is still on. The stop is split into two legs at two prices, so one part of the position can be protected differently from the rest. The panel prints what the position makes or loses if that stop is hit, so the worst case is a number rather than a guess. The 1R line stays where the trade opened it, measured off the initial stop, so its R-multiple means the same thing on the last day that it meant on the first.

Act III After the close · the review room

See what breaking your own rules costs you

Not "how did I do?" Every journal answers that. The question is whether the discipline is paying, in dollars, and whether it's getting better.

The daily ritual

Close the day in 30 seconds

One line in the Planner offers "Close the day · 30 sec." The panel grades the day's process straight from your ledger, asks how you were, takes one optional line, and suggests a grade.

  • Graded on process, not P/L. A red day with every rule followed is an A. A green day that broke your daily cap is not.
  • Seven checks, auto-graded from the ledger: the day's risk against the account's daily rules, each trade's risk against its own cap, entries you took without planning them (named, so you know which), entries made while the throttle said stand down, stops widened away from price, whether you played the book, and what's piled up in the review queue.
  • One honest line about how you were: Sharp, OK, or Off, and one sentence to your tomorrow self, if there is one.
CrucibleTrade · Planner · Close the day
The 'Close the day' panel, auto-graded from the ledger: new risk taken against the $1,250 daily new-risk cap, whether the day's entries were planned, whether any were taken while the throttle said stand down, whether any stop was widened, whether the trades were graded against the playbook, and a warning that trades are waiting in the review queue. It includes Sharp / OK / Off buttons, a one-line prompt, a suggested grade of B, and the note that P/L stays out of it because this grades process, not money.
Trade Review

Every trade, on the chart it actually traded

CrucibleTrade caches the bars and rebuilds the tape you traded, with recent trades on 2-minute candles and older swings on daily, so you can see whether you bought the breakout or chased it, and where your stop really should have been.

  • Entry & exit markers on real 2-minute to daily candles, with both stop lines: the one you started with and the one you ended with.
  • Anchored VWAP & moving averages for open-day, prior-day, and 5-day context.
  • Your playbook as a checklist right on the chart. Grade each rule Followed, Broke, or N/A, with a "what happened?" note.
  • A guided queue that flags trades missing a setup, a behavior tag, a stop basis, or notes. It is keyboard-driven, so you can clear a backlog in one sitting. A deep first import tells you how many trades it just queued, and review status can be set in bulk across whatever filter you're looking at, so a 500-trade history is a workflow instead of a wall.
  • Setup, mistake & lesson tags that feed straight into the Playbook and the reports below.
CrucibleTrade · Trade Review · working the queue
Trade Review: the selected trade is a PANW long opened 07/31/26 in the Sample IRA, still open and needing review, replayed on 2-minute candles from saved bars with downloads off. Its chart carries the initial stop line, the entry and both exit markers, a 5-day moving average and the open-day and prior-day anchored VWAPs; beside it, P/L now $44.08 and −$31.76 if stopped, 0.55R now and −0.40R if stopped, $79.90 of initial risk and a $319.20 current stop, with flags for the missing mistake tag and review notes.
CrucibleTrade · Trade Review · grading a broken rule
Trade Review of a trade the review flagged with behaviour tags: its entry and exits plotted on the price chart with the initial stop line, the trade's P/L and R-multiple beside its initial risk and current stop, and the playbook checklist below, showing which of the setup's rules were followed and which were not.
Adherence & mistake cost

Put a dollar figure on your discipline

Once trades are graded against your own rules, the arithmetic is available: what a followed-all trade is worth versus a trade where you deviated. That gap is the discipline edge, it heads the Playbook, and it is the number this whole app exists to show you.

  • Followed-all vs. deviation expectancy, side by side, with the per-trade dollar gap between them across the top of the Playbook.
  • Setups ranked by edge: rules written, trades taken, win rate with near-breakeven scratches split out of the losses, expectancy, average R, and how closely you followed that setup's own rules. Bucketed Strong / Watch / Avoid, with the negative-edge ones listed out to retire.
  • What deviating costs: every behavior you tag in review, priced by the trades it touched, the dollars attributed to it, and where it ranks against the rest. Both vocabularies live here too (your setups and their rules, and the behaviors that are their opposite), so the page that scores the process is also the page that defines it.
  • Multi-tag mistake cost that reconciles to the penny. Real trades break more than one rule, so cost is shown two ways: the net P/L of every trade a tag touched, and the attributed share when a trade's P/L is split across its tags. Two lenses, no double-counting, and the attributed total adds up to your actual net P/L.
CrucibleTrade · Playbook · setups ranked by edge
The Playbook page: a discipline header reading 79% adherence over 173 of 220 graded trades, an $812.73-per-trade discipline edge, 173 followed-all trades and 47 deviations. Below is a table of ten ruled setups ranked by edge, each with its rule count, trades taken with near-breakeven scratches marked separately, win rate, expectancy, average R, adherence and a Strong, Watch / Mixed or Avoid / Improve status, and a review list of the three negative-edge setups to consider retiring with what each costs per trade.
CrucibleTrade · Playbook · what deviating costs
The Playbook's Behaviors card: the vocabulary you tag deviations with in review (bought extended, chased, entered before confirmation, exited too early), each active or retirable, above a 'What deviating costs' table ranking those behaviors by the trades they touched, the P/L attributed to each, and the net P/L of every trade the tag appeared on.
Discipline by month

And the only question after that: am I improving?

Every day you closed out, kept together in the Playbook and graded on process, with a month-by-month strip above them tracking two numbers: how much of your playbook you followed, and how much deviating still cost you. Both should be moving, and this is where you find out whether they are.

  • Adherence month by month: the figures climb as your process tightens up, flagged improving when the trend holds.
  • Mistake & rule-break cost shrinking toward zero as the bad habits fade.
  • Every graded day in one list: A, B and C cards with streak counts, the line you wrote that evening, and the one thing that cost you the grade.
CrucibleTrade · Playbook · Days
The Playbook's Days card: the last 30 closed day cards summarised as 3 A's, 24 B's and 3 C's with an A-run counter, a 'Discipline by month' strip climbing from 88.7% adherence in February to 98.9% in July as the cost of deviating falls from $1,880.38 to $914.10 and the trend is flagged improving. Below it is one row per day with its grade, whether the trader felt sharp, OK or off, the note written that evening, and why the grade landed: all checks clean, an unplanned entry named by ticker, a trade still waiting in review, or more risk taken that day than the $1,250 daily new-risk cap allowed.
Proof, before you type anything

Don't take our word for it. Open the sample and click anything.

A fresh install opens a complete sample journal automatically: 282 trades and 10,574 intraday bars across two accounts, 20 symbols in nine sectors, a written playbook, every report populated, and charts that work offline. A searchable 43-topic Help Center is built in too. No account, no card, none of your data. The sample never starts the trial clock.

STOP 01 · BEFORE

Size an idea

Open the Planner: ideas in every status, each sized to its account's risk budget, with plan notes that explain how an entry and a stop became a share count.

STOP 02 · DURING

Work the open book

Eight open positions with trailed stops, a two-leg split stop mid-scale-out, and each account throttled by its own status: the day as it actually looks.

STOP 03 · AFTER

Close the day, read the lesson

Most historical days are already graded; the newest is left open so you meet the 30-second ritual yourself. Each closed trade's notes are model answers covering what went well, what went wrong, and one concrete change.

STOP 04 · THE ARC

Watch discipline pay

The sample is a trader with a character arc: early months carry broken rules and losses that ran past stops, while the last month is straight A's. The Playbook's discipline-by-month strip reads up and to the right, demonstrated rather than asserted.

CrucibleTrade · Reports · Overview · the whole sample year
Reports Overview loaded with the bundled sample: net return, time-weighted return, profit factor, win rate, streaks and R-multiples, above a realized P/L curve.
CrucibleTrade · Playbook · Coach's log
The Playbook's Coach's log: the tail of the graded day cards, then a dated feed of everything written in review, with each entry tagged either as a day note or with the ticker it came from, pairing what the trade taught with the change to make next time.

Opened automatically on a fresh install, and available again from Settings → Backup / Restore → Load Full Sample Database. A banner marks sample mode; clearing it returns to the real choice to import or start empty.

What you're actually buying

One file on your disk, and nothing that can be switched off

CrucibleTrade is a desktop app backed by a single local SQLite database. There is no account to create, nothing to sync, and no server between you and your own trading record. Nothing about you or your trading ever leaves your machine.

One portable .db file you own, back up, and move anywhere, with backups written to a folder you pick so they outlive the app
No account, no cloud, no usage analytics, and no ads or upsells inside the app
Its only outbound calls are the price downloads you switch on and a once-a-day update check carrying the app version, OS, and a new-install flag that remains until one check succeeds. Each has an off switch
A license verified offline by signature, movable between your machines
macOS builds signed and notarized by Apple; every download listed with its SHA-256

If Kalman Software disappeared tomorrow, the app keeps running, the license keeps verifying offline, and your journal is a SQLite file on your own disk.

Broker CSV
CrucibleTrade
Local .db
No cloud upload

Second product under the same contract as RangefinderInvest: local file, pay once, offline verification.

Pricing

Pay once. Keep it.

$99 launch price.
First 100 paid licenses · $149 regular.

A countable launch offer, not a timer. The first 100 paid licenses are $99. The regular price is $149. Buy at the launch price and that purchase is settled; 12 months of updates start on the day you buy.

Includes 12 months of updates. Your license is yours forever: it never expires and nothing ever locks. When the year is up you keep every version you already have and it goes on working. Another 12 months of new versions is an optional $59 update pass, only if you want it. It never auto-renews.

30-day full trial. The clock starts on your first edit or import, not at install. A lapsed trial goes read-only, never locked: your journal, reports, exports, and backups keep working. 30-day refunds.

Checkout is handled by Stripe, which is the merchant of record. Not right for you? Reply within 30 days and you get your money back. See the terms & refunds.

Who makes this

Why this app exists

I'm a retired electrical engineer and individual trader, not a broker or trading guru. For years I kept a spreadsheet beside my trading software to plan size, track open risk, and record the lesson afterward. CrucibleTrade brings that loop into one local app.

Questions: [email protected] · support. Second product under the same contract as RangefinderInvest: local file, pay once, offline verification.

One housekeeping note, because it surprises people: your card statement shows the charge through Link (Stripe's checkout) as LINK.COM* plus a short form of the company name for either app.

Questions

Frequently asked

What does it cost?

A one-time license, no subscription, with the current launch offer and regular price stated in the pricing section. It includes 12 months of updates. The license itself never expires and nothing ever locks: when the year is up, every version you already have keeps working exactly as it did, and another year of new versions is an optional update pass, never automatic. The license is verified on your machine with no phone-home, no server and no account, and can be moved between your computers. Checkout is handled by Stripe, which is the merchant of record; 30-day refunds per the terms.

What happens when the trial ends?

It goes read-only, never locked. The 30-day clock starts on your first edit or import, not at install, so downloading the app and clicking through the sample costs you nothing. If it lapses before you buy, your whole journal stays readable: every trade, every report, the Playbook, the calendar. CSV export and backups keep working, so your history is always yours to take out. The active workflow pauses until a license is activated: importing, editing, matching, planning, saving reviews, and refreshing prices. Nothing is deleted and nothing is held hostage.

Which brokers can I import from?

Two families: Thinkorswim / Schwab account-statement CSVs and Fidelity history CSVs, plus Fidelity ATP order files for precise execution times. That is the whole list today. There is no broker API sync and no OAuth broker link, and we won't name brokers that aren't supported yet. Imports are account-scoped, so each file lands in the account it belongs to, re-imports don't double-count, and matching preserves the setup, notes, and stops you already entered. You can keep as many accounts as you trade.

Is my data sent anywhere?

Your trading data? No. None of it, ever. Everything lives in a local SQLite database on your computer, and there is no account, no login, and no background sync. Rather than claim the app never opens a connection, here is the whole list of what it does open, which is two things.

1 · Market data you switch on. Chart candles, quotes and ticker metadata are fetched from Yahoo Finance, and they are off until you turn them on. A fresh install downloads nothing. Switched on, it fetches when you press Update Prices and when you open a trade whose chart isn't cached yet, and a request carries a ticker, an interval and a date range, never a position or a P/L. Leave them off and you type or paste your own marks: open P/L, open risk and the throttle all work with no feed at all.

2 · A once-a-day update check. Starting with 0.59.0 the app asks crucibletrade.com whether a newer version exists. It sends limited technical information including the product, version, operating system, and whether this is the first launch. We keep aggregate counts by product, version, and operating system and do not use the request to identify or track anyone. Nothing about your trades or license is sent. Turn it off in Settings → Updates; Microsoft Store builds never send it. Full detail is in the privacy policy.

Both have off switches, and the honest test beats any promise we could write here: firewall the app. Everything local keeps working. You can back up, move, or delete your data at any time because it's a single file you control.

All eight questions →

Download CrucibleTrade

The full app, free for 30 days. No card, no account, nothing to cancel. Load the sample year first if you want; the clock doesn't start until you edit or import something of your own.

macOS

macOS 11 or later · Apple silicon · 144 MB

Download .dmg

Signed and notarized by Apple, so it opens with no Gatekeeper warning. Drag it to Applications and go. This build is Apple silicon only; there is no Intel build yet.

SHA-256 · .dmg5242f01af3342378eb3b1deea26c05031b6ad744870042cb59e03dc8172d7e10

Windows

Windows 10 or 11 · 64-bit

Get it from theMicrosoft Store

Microsoft signs and delivers the Store build, so it installs with no security warning and keeps itself updated. On Windows this opens the Store app straight to the listing; press Get. If nothing opens, this PC hasn't got the Store (some Windows installs don't), so take the direct installer below instead.

Or download the installer directly (.exe, 116 MB)
The direct .exe triggers a security warning, sometimes two. Here's why, and what to do.

Windows SmartScreen and Chrome's equivalent flag installers they haven't seen downloaded many times yet. It's a measure of how well known a file is, not whether it's safe. Every new independent app starts at zero and earns its way out. We haven't bought a code-signing certificate because, per Microsoft's current guidance, no certificate grants an instant bypass any more; reputation still has to be earned either way.

Depending on your browser and Windows settings you'll meet one of these, sometimes both:

  1. Downloading: the browser says the file "isn't commonly downloaded". In Edge, the way through is hidden twice over: open the menu beside the file in the downloads list and choose Keep, then, if a second box appears whose big button says Delete, click the ˅ on that button and choose Keep anyway. Deleting is the prominent option, not the correct one.
  2. Opening it: if Windows shows "Windows protected your PC", click More info, then Run anyway. You may not see this one at all.

Either box may also list the publisher as Unknown. That's the missing certificate and nothing more. Don't take our word for it, though; check the SHA-256 below against the file you got.

Prefer to skip it entirely? Use the Microsoft Store button above. Microsoft re-signs that build, so there's no warning at all. If you reach the Store listing in a browser instead, click its View in Store button rather than Download: the web page's Download button gives you a small Microsoft-made helper .exe, which is new enough to draw the same unrecognized-file warning. Either way you can confirm you got the exact file we published by checking the SHA-256 below.

SHA-256 · .exeab26e0f9150f179203cc8b476ee31217ef3b549b0a98020b4a741c79ed22f619

Linux

64-bit · Debian/Ubuntu · 148 MB

Download .deb

Unsigned, like most direct Linux downloads. Your software centre may say "not from a verified source". Installing from a terminal skips that: sudo apt install ./CrucibleTrade-0.65.0.deb

Other distributions (.AppImage, 190 MB)

SHA-256 · .debea3e30d9ba8d59740716da176a21c39e9071c89a80c6dfbe8e13c53485d92093SHA-256 · .AppImagea0050d619dffbee10931cbb5012e7794654831055069d8e7ccfde64cba7d27ff

CrucibleTrade 0.65.0. Every file above is listed with its SHA-256, and the same digests are published as SHA256SUMS-0.65.0.txt. On macOS or Linux, shasum -a 256 <file> should print the matching line.

30-day full trial. The clock starts on your first edit or import, not at install. A lapsed trial goes read-only, never locked: your journal, reports, exports, and backups keep working. Then a one-time purchase including 12 months of updates, and the license itself never expires (current and regular pricing). 30-day refunds.

No card, no account, nothing to cancel