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Record why you bought each stock, discover which buying patterns work best for you, and build a habit of thesis-driven investing
The Journal tab is your investment decision diary. Every trade in your portfolio has a journal card — some filled with your own reasoning, others auto-generated by the system from available signals. Over time the journal becomes a data-driven retrospective: which buying patterns (momentum, quality, dip buys) have worked best for you, shown in the Pattern Insights panel at the top of the tab.
The Journal tab has two sections that load automatically — no filter or run button required. Both update in real time as prices refresh.
| Section | What It Shows | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Watching | Stocks on your watchlist that have a WJ (Watchlist Journal) note written. Sorted by most recently edited note first. | Watchlist tab → WJ button → note text |
| Bought | All trades, sorted newest first. Each trade shows buy date, broker, buy price, current P&L%, and thesis (or a prompt to add one). | Trade history (Add Trade / CSV import) |
Above the Bought section, a summary line shows what fraction of your trades have a thesis recorded — e.g. "34 of 42 trades have a thesis (81%)". This motivates completeness: if you are below 70%, you have trades you cannot easily explain.
Above both sections (when no ticker filter is active), the Pattern Insights panel summarises your historical buying patterns by thesis category. It appears once you have at least 2 categorised trades.
Every trade in the Bought section has a journal card. Here is what each part of the card means:
| Field | What It Means |
|---|---|
| Ticker | NSE/BSE symbol of the stock (or MF/global ticker) |
| Date · Broker · Price | Buy date, the broker account used, and your buy price (₹ or $). One card per trade — adding more at a later date creates a separate card. |
| P&L% now | Current profit/loss from this trade's cost basis to the last loaded price. Green = profit, red = loss. Shows "—" if prices haven't been loaded. |
| ✎ (edit button) | Opens the trade edit drawer to update the thesis, category, buy price, qty, or broker. |
| Thesis blockquote | Your recorded reason for buying. Blue border = manual or overwritten. Grey border + "auto" badge = system-generated. Click anywhere on the card to open the edit drawer. |
| "+ Why did you buy this?" | Shown on blank cards. Click to open the edit drawer and add a thesis. |
A thesis has two parts: a category chip (optional) and a free-text reason (optional). You can fill in one, both, or neither.
Category chips appear in the trade edit drawer as selectable buttons. Select the one that best describes why you bought:
The category you choose feeds directly into Pattern Insights — so it is worth being honest. "Tip / recommendation" means someone else's suggestion; "Quality buy" means you researched it yourself and bought for fundamentals.
If you save a trade without selecting a category or writing text, the system auto-generates a thesis. The auto-generation logic uses:
autoGenerated: true. The moment you click ✎ and save any change — even just selecting a different category — the thesis becomes yours and the system never touches it again.
The Pattern Insights panel sits at the top of the Journal tab (above the Watching section) when no ticker filter is active. It requires at least 2 categorised trades to appear.
The panel shows a table with one row per thesis category you have used:
| Column | What It Shows |
|---|---|
| Category | Emoji + label (e.g. 📈 Momentum breakout). Rows sorted by average P&L descending — best category at top. |
| Trades | Number of trades with this category (including closed trades). |
| Avg P&L | Average current P&L% across all trades in this category. Green = positive average. Red = negative average. For open trades, uses current price vs cost. For closed trades, uses realised P&L%. |
| Win rate | Percentage of trades in this category that are currently profitable. Shown as a bar chart + number (e.g. 72%). High win rate = you pick stocks well in this style. |
The journal is accessible from multiple places in the portfolio via two buttons that appear on stock rows:
| Button | Full Name | What It Does | Where It Appears |
|---|---|---|---|
| TJ | Trade Journal | Opens Journal tab filtered to that stock's trades. Shows all buy entries for that ticker with their theses. TJ button is highlighted/filled if the stock already has a manual (non-auto) thesis. | Holdings, Watchlist, Smart Views, Momentum tab rows |
| WJ | Watchlist Journal | Opens a modal to write or edit a single research note for a watchlist stock. WJ notes have 4 categories: 🚀 Breakout, 📉 Dip, 🔬 Research, 🎯 Buy zone. | Holdings, Watchlist, and Journal (Watching section ✎ button) |
When the Journal tab is in filtered mode (after clicking TJ for a specific stock), a yellow bar at the top reads "📍 SYMBOL only" with an ✕ Show all button. Click this to return to the full unfiltered journal view. Clicking the Journal tab directly from the navigation also clears any active filter.
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