How to export trades from your broker, which report to choose, common CSV problems with dates, symbols and time zones, and how to check an import is complete.
Typing trades into a journal by hand is slow and error-prone. Importing them from your broker is faster and more accurate, as long as you pick the right report and check the result. Here is how to avoid the usual problems.
Brokers often offer several exports. For a journal, you usually want:
Avoid tax lot or realized gain reports for journal imports. They are organized for taxes, not for trades. The TradeThink docs list the right report for each supported broker, such as Interactive Brokers, Schwab, tastytrade and MetaTrader.
Some brokers export times in your local time, others in exchange time or UTC. If times are off by hours, your time-of-day analysis will be wrong. Check a few trades against your platform.
01/02/2026 is January 2 in the US and February 1 in much of the world. Check that dates are read correctly.
Options and futures symbols vary by broker. A good import recognizes the underlying, strike, type and expiration from each broker's format.
One order can produce several fills. Each fill should be imported, then grouped into one trade.
Some exports put commissions and fees in separate columns, or in separate rows. Make sure they are attached to trades so P&L is net. See the impact of fees.
Importing overlapping periods should not create duplicate trades. Check how your journal handles it.
For supported brokers, an automatic connection removes the manual export step. TradeThink can sync automatically with several brokers and exchanges using read-only access, and imports files from 20+ others, including stock, options, futures, forex, CFD and crypto platforms.
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