Connect your broker.

How a broker connection actually works

A trading journal is only as good as the data feeding it. Before TailJournal can compute your win rate, expectancy, R-multiples, or drawdown, it needs an accurate record of every fill: instrument, side, quantity, entry and exit price, fees, and timestamps. There are four ways to get that record out of your broker and into your journal, and they differ in how much they automate, how current they stay, and how they handle your credentials.

The four methods are OAuth, API key, CSV import, and manual entry. The first two are “live” connections that pull data on a schedule without you lifting a finger. The last two are point-in-time methods you trigger yourself. Which one you should use depends mostly on what your broker supports, not on what you prefer — most traders end up using whichever live method their broker offers and fall back to CSV for anything that does not connect.

• —OAuth: you authorize TailJournal through your broker’s own login screen; we never see your password and receive a revocable, scoped token instead.
• —API key: you generate a read-only key inside your broker’s settings and paste it into TailJournal; the key carries only the permissions you grant it.
• —CSV import: you export a trade history file from your broker and upload it; nothing stays connected afterward.
• —Manual entry: you type trades in yourself — slower, but it works for any market, any broker, and discretionary notes.

OAuth and API keys: the secure, automated options

OAuth is the gold standard and the method we recommend wherever a broker offers it. You click “Connect,” you land on your broker’s own login page, you sign in there, and you approve a specific, limited set of permissions — typically read-only access to your positions and trade history. TailJournal never touches your username or password; the broker hands back a scoped access token that we store encrypted. You can revoke that token from inside your broker at any time, instantly cutting off access without having to change your password.

An API key achieves something similar for brokers that expose a developer API instead of an OAuth flow. You generate the key yourself inside your broker’s account settings, restrict it to read-only where the broker allows, optionally bind it to an IP address, and paste it into TailJournal. The advantage is the same as OAuth — your login password is never shared and the key can be deleted at the source. The one difference is that you are responsible for creating the key with the narrowest permissions possible. Never generate a key with trading or withdrawal rights for a journaling tool; read-only is all we need and all you should grant.

Between the two, prefer OAuth when it is available because the permission scoping and revocation are handled by the broker and there is no secret for you to copy, store, or accidentally expose. Use an API key when that is the only live option your broker provides.

Auto-sync versus CSV import

Auto-sync is what an OAuth or API-key connection gives you: TailJournal polls your broker on a schedule, pulls any new fills since the last check, and updates your journal automatically. New trades appear without you doing anything, your statistics stay current, and you are far less likely to miss a fill or fat-finger a number. This is the experience most active traders want — close your platform for the day and your journal is already up to date.

CSV import is a manual, point-in-time alternative. You export a trade history file from your broker — almost every platform can produce one — and upload it to TailJournal. We parse the rows, map the columns to fields, and import the trades. It is reliable and universal, but it captures only the trades that existed at the moment you exported. To stay current you have to repeat the export periodically. CSV is the right tool when your broker has no live connection, when you are backfilling historical trades from before you joined, or when you simply prefer to review and confirm data in batches rather than have it stream in.

• —Auto-sync: continuous, hands-off, always current; requires an OAuth or API-key connection.
• —CSV import: manual, one batch at a time, works with any broker that can export a trade history.
• —Both produce the same end result — clean trades in your journal — so a broker without auto-sync is never a dealbreaker.

How we keep your broker credentials safe

Credential safety is not a feature you should have to trust on faith, so here is exactly how it works. With OAuth, we never receive your broker password — you enter it only on your broker’s site, and we hold a scoped token instead. With API keys, you create the key yourself and grant it the minimum permissions; we ask for read-only access and nothing more. Every token and key we do hold is encrypted at rest, transmitted only over encrypted connections, and used solely to read the trade data you connected us to.

We request read-only scopes wherever a broker supports them, which means a TailJournal connection cannot place, modify, or cancel an order, and cannot move funds. If your broker offers IP allow-listing or short token lifetimes, those work alongside our connection and we encourage using them. And because access lives in a token or key rather than your password, you stay in control: revoke from your broker or disconnect from TailJournal and the access is gone immediately, with no password reset required.

• —We never store your broker password — OAuth and scoped keys remove the need to.
• —Tokens and keys are encrypted at rest and only ever transmitted over encrypted channels.
• —Read-only access by default: no order placement, no cancellations, no withdrawals.
• —You can revoke or disconnect at any time, instantly, without changing your broker password.

Supported asset classes and broker categories

The 78 brokers in the grid above span every major category an active trader works in, and TailJournal models the instruments correctly rather than flattening everything into generic “buys” and “sells.” That matters for accurate analytics: options carry expiries, strikes, and multipliers; futures have contract specs and tick values; forex trades in lots with pip-denominated results; and crypto runs around the clock across spot and perpetuals.

Whether you trade a single market or several, the journal keeps each asset class’s math correct while still letting you see blended, account-level performance across all of them.

• —Stocks & options: equity and multi-leg options brokers, with contract multipliers and per-leg fills handled properly.
• —Futures: dedicated futures brokers with correct tick values and point multipliers for accurate P&L.
• —Forex: spot FX brokers with lot-, pip-, and currency-aware results.
• —Crypto: spot and derivatives exchanges, including 24/7 sessions and perpetuals.
• —Prop firm: evaluation and funded accounts, so challenge and payout phases are journaled like any other account.
• —Multi-asset: brokers that cover several of the above, consolidated into one performance view.

Do not see your broker?

The grid lists 78 named integrations, but it is not a hard limit on what you can journal. If your broker is not on the list, you have two reliable paths. First, almost every broker on earth can export a trade history as a CSV file; our importer maps standard columns — symbol, side, quantity, price, fees, and timestamps — so any well-formed trade CSV will import, named integration or not. Second, you can always log trades manually, which works for thin markets, brokers with no export at all, and discretionary positions you want to annotate as you go.

In practice this means no broker locks you out of TailJournal. A direct OAuth or API connection is the most convenient option when it exists, but CSV import is the universal fallback, and manual entry is the catch-all beneath that. If you would like to see a specific broker added as a named integration, tell us — broker coverage is driven by what our traders actually use.

Frequently asked