Getting started

This is a hand-held first session. By the end you will have created an account, set up a brokerage account with a starting balance, logged a trade through its full lifecycle, seen it on your dashboard and equity curve, asked the AI advisor one question, and reviewed your performance. It takes about ten minutes and nothing here can go wrong — every step tells you what you should see.

This guide describes the hosted app at app.tradr.cloud. If you run your own instance, the screens are identical; the few differences are called out in Self-hosted notes.

Self-hosted

Open your instance at its own address instead (by default http://localhost:8080). See Self-host with Docker Compose to stand one up first.

Before you start

You need:

• An email address and a browser (latest Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Edge).
• Nothing else. Tradr works as a plain manual journal — no broker connection, no API keys, no payment required to complete this tutorial.

Step 1 — Create your account

1. Go to https://app.tradr.cloud and choose Sign up.
2. Enter your email and a password, then submit.

Expected result: you land on an empty dashboard. There are no trades yet, so most widgets show zeros or an empty state — that is correct.

Hosted only

You may be asked to verify your email. Click the link in the message to confirm; you can still explore before verifying.

Self-hosted

Email verification is only active if the operator configured SMTP. If it is off, your account is usable immediately. If you ever forget your password on an instance without email, the operator can reset it from the server with tradr reset-password <your-email>.

Step 2 — Add a brokerage account with a starting balance

Every trade is booked against an account — this is how Tradr tracks your balance and builds your equity curve. Create one before logging trades.

1. Open Accounts from the main navigation.
2. Choose New account.
3. Fill in:
   • Name — e.g. Main or your broker’s name.
   • Currency — e.g. USD. Pick the currency this account trades in.
   • Starting balance — e.g. 10000. This is your opening cash; the equity curve begins here.
4. Save.

Expected result: the account appears in your accounts list showing a balance of your starting amount (e.g. $10,000.00). This opening balance is the baseline every future P&L figure is measured against.

Tradr supports multiple accounts in different currencies and consolidates them into a single view. For this tutorial one account is enough — see Accounts & the multi-currency ledger when you are ready to add more.

Step 3 — Log your first trade through its lifecycle

A Tradr position moves through three states:

State	Meaning
Draft	An idea you are planning but have not entered. No effect on your balance.
Open	You are in the trade. It shows in open positions and uses live/marked P&L.
Closed	You have exited. Realised P&L is booked to the account.

You will walk a trade through all three.

3a. Create a draft

1. Open Positions and choose New position.
2. Select the account you created in Step 2.
3. Enter the trade idea:
   • Symbol — e.g. AAPL.
   • Side — Long.
   • Quantity — e.g. 10 shares.
   • Planned entry price — e.g. 200.
   • Optionally a target, a stop, and a note describing the setup.
4. Save it as a Draft.

Expected result: the position appears in your Positions list tagged Draft. Your account balance is unchanged — a draft is just a plan.

Tip: the Trade calculator turns an entry, target, and stop into a suggested position size, risk/reward ratio, and dollar risk. Use it to size the trade before you commit.

3b. Open the position

When you actually enter the trade:

1. Open the draft and choose Open (or Add fill).
2. Confirm the entry price, quantity, fill date, and any fees.
3. Submit.

Expected result: the position is now tagged Open and shows in your open positions. If you added fees, they are recorded against the trade.

3c. Close the position

When you exit:

1. Open the position and choose Close (or Add closing fill).
2. Enter the exit price (e.g. 210), quantity, date, and any exit fees.
3. Submit.

Expected result: the position is tagged Closed and shows a realised P&L (e.g. a $10 move on 10 shares ≈ +$100.00, less fees). Your account balance updates to reflect the gain or loss.

Positions also support partial closes, scale-ins, and multiple fills. See Log and manage positions for the full lifecycle, including deleting a draft you decide not to take.

Step 4 — See it on the dashboard and equity curve

1. Go back to the Dashboard.

Expected result: the widgets are no longer empty. You should see:

• Stats reflecting one closed trade (e.g. trade count, win rate, net P&L).
• The equity curve now showing a line that starts at your $10,000 opening balance and steps to your post-trade balance.
• Your account balance widget showing the updated figure.

The dashboard is a drag-and-drop widget grid — add, remove, and rearrange panels (stats, open positions, performance charts, account balances, position sizing). Your layout is saved to your account. See Customise the dashboard.

Step 5 — Ask the AI advisor one question

The AI advisor is a conversational assistant that can analyse trade ideas and, if you opt in, reason over your own trade history.

Hosted only

The advisor needs either wallet credits (buy a credit pack and pay per use against your balance) or your own API key (BYOK — paste an Anthropic/OpenAI key in settings and you are billed by the provider directly). Pick whichever you prefer in Settings → Advisor. Without one of the two, the advisor is simply unavailable — nothing breaks.

Self-hosted

There are no wallet credits. You (or your operator) supply an LLM API key, either as a platform key in the server’s .env or as your own BYOK key in settings. See How the AI advisor works.

Once a key or credits are in place:

1. Open the Advisor.
2. (Optional) turn on trade-data access so the advisor can see your positions and accounts for personalised answers.
3. Ask something concrete, e.g. “Review my AAPL trade — was the risk/reward reasonable?”
4. Send.

Expected result: the advisor streams back a response token by token. If you granted data access, it can reference the trade you just logged. You can also upload a chart screenshot for the advisor to read (requires a vision-capable model).

Prefer a provider without tool-use? You still get a conversation-only mode — you just lose live market-data fetching. This is surfaced when you pick the model.

Step 6 — Review your performance

1. Open Performance.
2. Choose a timeframe — daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, YTD, or all-time.

Expected result: a P&L breakdown for the chosen period and an equity curve covering it. With one closed trade you will see a single data point; the picture fills in as you log more.

You’re done

You have completed a full loop: account → draft → open → closed → dashboard → advisor → performance. From here, keep logging real trades — the value compounds as your history grows.

Next steps

• Log and manage positions — partial closes, scale-ins, tags, and editing.
• Use the trade calculator — size and risk-check before you enter.
• Import trades from CSV — bring your history in from another journal or your broker.
• Accounts & the multi-currency ledger — add more brokers and currencies.
• Metrics glossary — exactly how each number is calculated.