How can I track *complex* forex trades so I have an idea of my profit vs loss over time?

External question — Personal Finance Stack Exchange Author: Michael Altfield Original post: https://money.stackexchange.com/questions/152921 License: CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Adaptation: HTML converted to plain text; contact email addresses removed. What's the best way to keep track of my forex trades so that I can determine how profitable my trading has been? I've been looking into trading foreign exchange currency pairs for profit, but before I get too ahead of myself I want to make sure I have all the tools I need to track my success. I found guides on the internet for how to calculate profit/loss. It makes sense when you trade 100 EUR for USD and then trade those USD back again to EUR. But it seems wayy more complicated if you trade on a cascading set of limit orders of different quantities back-and-forth. And between different pairs. How do forex traders keep track of their trades so they can, at an instant and over time, analyze how successful they've been?

External answer — Personal Finance Stack Exchange Author: Michael Altfield Original post: https://money.stackexchange.com/a/156238 License: CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Adaptation: HTML converted to plain text; contact email addresses removed. The solution to tracking trade history with different quantities is to use lots . Say your first order was to buy 100 EUR (paid with some amount of USD). For accounting purposes, we can place that buy order into Lot #1 . This lot remains open until you've completed sell orders at least 100 EUR. Examples Here's a few examples to show how Lots can be opened with buy orders, and closed with a set (or fraction) of sell order(s). Example 1: Sell 100 EUR The easiest case possible is when you sell exactly the amount of EUR that you bought -- in this case, 100 EUR. When you put this 100 EUR sell order in Lot #1 it's closed. You can now calculate the profit of Lot #1 based on [a] how much USD you bought the 100 EUR for and [b] how much you got when you sold the 100 EUR. Example 2: Sell 50 EUR Twice A slightly more complicated example is where you sold exactly half the amount of EUR that you bought -- in this case, two sell orders of 50 EUR. When you put both of these 50 EUR sell orders in your Lot #1 , it's closed (because the total amount sold equals the total amount bought in this lot). Again, you can use the three orders to calculate the profit of Lot #1 . Example 3: Sell unequal amounts As time goes on, you may find yourself in a situation where you can't stuff your most-recent sell orders into your most-recent open Lot. Let's you sold 40 EUR three times. In this case, the first two orders combined (40+40=80 EUR) don't match the most-recent buy (100 EUR), and the third exceeds it (40*3=120 EUR). Of course, the solution is to fill Lot #42 with a fraction of the third sell order. So you add the first two Sell 40 EUR sell orders to Lot #42 and 50% of the third sell order to Lot #42 . That closes out Lot #42 , and you can calculate its profit. The remaining half of the third sell order can be used to close the subsequent Lot #43 . Software While you could keep track of your lots with pen & paper or a spreadsheet, I prefer to use a tool that was designed for this. There's many accounting & portfolio tracking apps for this, but personally I prefer GNU Cash -- which is free, has a great community , great documentation , and has a great UI for manipulating lots . Conclusion You can create and close lots however you want, but I usually just create one lot for every buy order and "close" each lot with the most-recent sell order. This is called FIFO . Though "Tax Lots" are traditionally used for taxes, you can use this technique to calculate your profitability over-time by just looking at your closed lots.