The FTMO trading journal that keeps challenge accounts alive.
Most FTMO challenges fail because of daily drawdown breaches — usually after one or two emotionally-driven trades that ignore the playbook. GridTrade is built to surface that pattern early: every trade gets an emotion rating (1-5), a setup tag, and a valid/invalid flag. Filter your trades 9 ways. See which emotions kill your equity curve. Fix the leak before it kills the challenge.
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Why FTMO traders specifically
1. Multi-challenge tracking, native
Running an FTMO 100k Challenge in parallel with a Verification on a 25k account and a Funded on another 50k? GridTrade ships multi-account on day one — separate balances, separate equity curves, separate trade lists, unified analytics. One click between accounts. No "upgrade to Pro for multi-account" tax.
2. Daily drawdown tracking via the calendar
FTMO's daily 5% drawdown rule is what fails most accounts. GridTrade's calendar view shows each day's PnL as a colored box — you spot the bleeding days before they compound. Combined with emotion-tagging, you can ask "what's my drawdown frequency on days where my average emotion was ≥ 4?" That answer is where the edge lives.
3. R-multiple per trade — not just dollars
FTMO targets are dollar-denominated, but the actual skill is R-multiple consistency. GridTrade auto-calculates R per trade from your entry, stop, and exit. The setup playbook shows which of your setups are positive-expectancy vs negative — so you stop running the ones that don't pay you.
4. Emotion as a structured field (1-5)
90% of FTMO breaches are emotional, not technical. Most journals let you write a free-text note. GridTrade makes emotion a structured field — you can filter "show me my win rate when I was at emotion 4 or 5." For most traders the gap to emotion 1-3 is brutal. That's the leak.
5. Mistakes catalog
Pre-built mistake tags: Revenge Trading, FOMO Entry, Stop Moved, Overtrading After Win, Setup Invalid But Took Anyway. Tag the trade, see the pattern. The mistakes view shows which mistake is costing you the most R.
How to use GridTrade for your FTMO challenge
5 minutes to set up. Then journal every trade as you take them.
- Step 1 — Create your FTMO account profile. In GridTrade, add a new account named "FTMO 100k Challenge" with starting balance €100,000. Set the daily-loss target to 5% and the max-loss to 10% in your notes (GridTrade doesn't auto-enforce FTMO rules — manual review reflects FTMO's own workflow).
- Step 2 — Build your setup playbook. Add the 3-5 setups you actually trade (Opening Range, FVG, Order Block, etc.). Don't add 15. Each setup gets its own live win-rate and expectancy stat once you have ≥10 trades.
- Step 3 — Log every trade right after the close. Entry, stop, exit, setup tag, valid/invalid, emotion 1-5, optional screenshot + note. Takes 60 seconds. Do it BEFORE the next trade, while it's still raw.
- Step 4 — Weekly review on Sunday. Open the calendar view, scan the week. Filter by emotion ≥ 4 — see how you traded when amped. Filter by setup "Opening Range" — is it still positive-expectancy? Update the playbook if needed.
- Step 5 — When you pass to Verification or Funded — create a new account. Your historical Challenge data stays as a separate account. That's gold for figuring out what worked during your best stretches.
FAQ — FTMO & GridTrade
No — and that's by design. FTMO doesn't endorse external journals, and we don't claim to be officially affiliated. GridTrade is built independently with FTMO traders' workflow in mind: multi-account, daily-loss tracking via calendar, emotion logging, R-multiple per trade. Compatible with how FTMO actually works.
No — GridTrade is a journal, not a risk-management gateway between you and your broker. We surface the data (daily PnL on the calendar, drawdown patterns by emotion/setup), but you make the call. FTMO's own platform enforces the actual rule.
Yes. Asset-agnostic with built-in presets for the typical FTMO instruments — major FX pairs, indices (NQ/ES via CFD), Gold, BTC. Custom ticker support if you trade something exotic. PnL and R auto-calculate from tick value + tick size.
Direct broker import: not yet. You can manually re-log the most recent 30-50 trades — and honestly, that manual re-touch is the most valuable part of a post-mortem. Tag the emotions you remember, mark which were valid setups, see the pattern. CSV import is on the roadmap for traders with 500+ historical trades.
Same setup — just add additional accounts. GridTrade was built for traders running multiple prop firms in parallel. See also: Apex journal, Topstep journal, funded-account journal.
Legal & Trademark Notice
Trademarks: “FTMO” is a trademark of FTMO s.r.o.. GridTrade is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, or in any way officially connected to FTMO. References to FTMO are made under the right of comparative advertising (German UWG § 6 / EU Directive 2006/114/EC) and to describe compatibility with their publicly known rules.
Disclaimer: GridTrade is a journal/analytics tool. It does not provide trading signals, financial advice, or guarantees of success in any FTMO program. Trading carries substantial risk. References to FTMO rules (5% daily loss, 10% max loss) reflect FTMO's publicly stated terms as of May 2026 — please verify current rules on ftmo.com.
Last reviewed: 2026-05-22. · Operated by Fabian Lehmann (see Impressum).
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