Journal Trades Across Multiple Accounts: One Record, Not Three
Record the decision once and the differences per account. A worked example shows why three entries triple your sample and how R keeps accounts comparable.
3 Nov 2026 · 6 min read
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Record the decision once and the differences per account. If one trade is repeated onto three accounts, you made one decision. A journal that holds three entries for it triples the sample behind every statistic you later calculate, and a journal that holds only one loses what each account actually did. The answer is two layers: one record for the decision, one small line for each account.
What belongs to the decision and what belongs to the account
| Record it once (the decision) | Record it per account (the leg) |
|---|---|
| Setup or model, and your reason for the trade | Fill price and time |
| Planned stop, target and reward-to-risk | Size and the money risked |
| Grade for how you executed it | Result in money and in R |
| Emotional state, notes, screenshots | Whether it copied at all, and why not if it did not |
| Any change to the plan while it was open | Account name or type (demo or live), so you can filter later |
A worked example: one decision, three accounts
These are made-up inputs, and the numbers are arithmetic, not a record of anyone's trading. A buy is planned at 1.1000 with a stop at 1.0980 and a target at 1.1040: 20 pips of risk for 40 pips of reward, so the plan is 2.0R. Each of three accounts risks 0.5% of its own balance, and two of the fills land a pip or two away from the plan.
| Account | Balance | Entry | Exit | Risk to stop (pips) | Gain (pips) | Result in R | Result in money |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Account 1 (the trade you took) | 50,000 | 1.1000 | 1.1040 | 20 | 40 | 2.00R | 500.00 |
| Account 2 | 100,000 | 1.1001 | 1.1039 | 21 | 38 | 1.81R | 904.76 |
| Account 3 | 25,000 | 1.1000 | 1.1038 | 20 | 38 | 1.90R | 237.50 |
- The money differs because the balances differ, not because anything went better or worse. Adding the three money figures together tells you what the day did to your capital, and nothing about the decision.
- The R figures differ only by the fill. They sit close together (2.00, 1.81, 1.90), which is the point of writing results in R: it strips out size.
- Count it once. Three entries would add 5.71R to a sample that holds one decision. Take the trade you made as the entry for the statistics, and keep the other two figures as the record of how the copies fared.
A routine for several accounts
- Write the decision entry on the account you traded from, as you would for a single account.
- Add one line per copy: fill price if it differs noticeably, and anything that went wrong.
- Mark each account as demo or live, and as an evaluation or a personal account if you keep both, so a filter can separate them.
- When you calculate statistics, use one row per decision. Use the per-account lines for questions about the accounts.
- Review the per-account lines monthly, not weekly. Differences between accounts need a longer window than a decision does.
What goes wrong
- Different risk per account, same label. If one account risks 0.25% and another 1%, say so on the leg, or the R figure will not mean the same thing across them.
- Mixed currencies. Money results in two currencies cannot be added. Keep them side by side, and use R to compare.
- Copies that never happened. A leg that did not copy is still information, and silence there looks like a flat result.
How Trepeat's journal handles it
We're working on a free journal and a backtester, with no date yet. Today Trepeat is a trade copier for MT4, MT5 and cTrader, currently on demo accounts, and you can add notes, a grade and screenshots to any copied trade once it closes, with a calendar of your results.
The entry belongs to the trade you took, not to each copy, so one decision copied to five accounts is one entry. Expanding a row in the journal list shows each account's leg, and the trade's P&L is one total per currency, never converted. The journal documentation has the detail. For what a copy's fill can differ by, see why follower fills differ; for what to write on a copy, see journalling copied trades; and for sizing across accounts, position sizing when copying trades.
Written by the Trepeat team.