For active futures traders
The futures trading journal that records itself.
Recap records your actual screens and can turn each detected, completed trade into a labeled, searchable video clip. Review what you saw and did without pressing record or scrubbing through hours of footage.
The fill is the trigger. No separate clip hotkey is required.
| Why traders don’t review | How Recap fixes it |
|---|---|
| Recording every session is tedious | Rolls automatically, all session |
| Finding one trade takes forever | Detected trades become labeled, searchable clips |
| Journals show the result — not the decision | See exactly what you saw, entry to exit |
Traders are told to review their trades. Many still do not.
It’s the most repeated advice in trading: study your tape the way an athlete studies game film. You don’t need convincing — you already believe it.
So why is the review folder empty? Because getting trade footage has two options, and you’ve probably tried both.
You tried recording everything. You tried the hotkey. Neither survived a live trade.
- Six hours of footage a day; maybe four minutes of it matter
- Finding your third trade means dragging a scrub bar through hours of nothing
- OBS records a session; it doesn’t know you traded
- You end up with a graveyard of giant files you never open
- The plan: press record on every entry and exit
- The reality: you’re mid-trade, watching the DOM, managing risk
- The impulsive entry, the panicked exit — the trades you most need on film are the ones where the hotkey never crossed your mind
- One missed press and the trade is gone for good
Same bug in both: they depend on you doing one more thing at the exact moment you’re busiest. Any system that relies on in-trade willpower loses to the trade.
So the trigger isn’t you. The fill is.
Recap is an automatic video trading journal for futures traders on Windows 10/11. It takes the clip hotkey out of the loop: it was already rolling. It records the screens you chose and watches your platform for the trade itself. When the connector reports that you went flat, Recap can cut and label the clip — NQ | long | +34.0 pts | 09:42:15 — and place it in your Library within seconds.
Link your platform
Use a stable connector for Sierra Chart, NinjaTrader, or MotiveWave; beta coverage also includes Quantower, ATAS X, and a direct Tradovate account connection. The connection is what makes clips automatic: without one, Recap still records and you cut clips yourself from the Timeline.
Choose your screens
Tell Recap which monitors or windows to record. It runs quietly all session, even minimized to the tray.
That’s the whole workflow
No start button, no hotkey, no tagging. Scaling in and out, flips, partial fills — each round trip becomes one labeled clip, seconds after you’re flat.
Run the film
Every screen replays side by side on one set of controls, with the trade’s numbers against your own averages and a set of journal questions to answer.
Recap records the trading screens you select and can automatically create a labeled clip when a connected platform reports a completed trade — fill-triggered, clipped and labeled, without OBS.
Start your free 30-day trial.
Enter your email. Recap is yours for the next 30 days: download it, sign in with that address, and your next trade goes to tape.
OrderFlow Labs member? Recap is included — email [email protected].
Others replay the market, while Recap replays YOU.
Other journals “replay” your trades by redrawing charts from market data. That shows what the market did. It can’t show your DOM, your order ticket, the alert you ignored, or the ten seconds you hesitated before clicking.
Recap plays back the actual footage of your screens — because the mistakes aren’t in the market’s tape. They’re in yours.
- Rebuilt from market data after the fact
- Shows a chart you may not have been watching
- Not your DOM layout, your order ticket, or your second monitor
- Real footage of your screens, captured as you traded
- Exactly what you saw — layout, tools, alerts and all
- Every monitor, replayed side by side in sync
- Full quality — every clip is an exact copy of what was recorded
Numbers tell you what happened. Tape shows you why. Keep your stats journal; add your film room.
Weighing your options? See how Recap compares with the established stats journals — or, looking for a TradeZella alternative?
A film room, not a video folder.
Captured is good. Findable is what makes review actually happen. Each review opens with Tale of the Tape, which puts this trade’s numbers — points, hold time, peak and heat — next to your own averages for that instrument on that account, so an outlier is obvious at a glance.
Example Tale of the Tape — simulated figures for illustration, not actual trading results. Risk Disclosure
A clip per trade, automatically
When Recap detects a completed round trip, it can create a labeled clip within seconds of the position going flat.
Find any trade in two clicks
Filter the Library by account, instrument, direction, win/loss, tag, date, points range, or hold time. “Every losing NQ trade this week” is two clicks, not an evening.
Every screen, side by side
One scrubber, one play button, 0.5/1/2/3/4x speed across every monitor you recorded. Zoom any feed up to 8x — frame your DOM once and every replay opens the same way.
The journal fills in the facts. You add the honesty.
An autosaving notes panel with four fixed questions — entry and exit, emotions, process versus outcome, learning — plus a 1–5 mood rating. No save button to forget.
Outliers jump out
Size, hold, peak, and heat compared against your own history. When the platform doesn’t provide a number, Recap says “not recorded” — it never guesses.
Clip what you didn’t trade
Hit Drop Marker live — button or global hotkey — or drag any covered range on the Timeline later and cut a clip after the fact.
Run the film. Empty the Unwatched list. Same time tomorrow.
Your footage is stored on your machine. Recap has no order-placement capability.
- Local-first. Recordings, clips, and notes exist only on your machine — no cloud, no uploads, no one else’s servers.
- Read-only by design. Recap reads trade events and has no capability to place, change, or cancel an order.
- Honest gaps. Where Windows can’t capture — a minimized window, a sleeping machine — Recap warns you and leaves the gap on the record, rather than claiming footage it didn’t capture.
- Built to keep rolling. It resumes after a restart, re-hooks windows that close and reopen, and finalizes footage on shutdown. A crash costs seconds, not the session.
- Full-quality clips. Every clip is an exact copy of the recorded footage, saved as an ordinary .mp4 — nothing re-compressed, and saved clips are never aged out.
Questions you should be asking.
Will recording slow down my trading machine?
Recap is built to run without getting in the way, and it needs a recent graphics card with hardware video encoding — most trading machines qualify (see the full requirements). We don’t publish benchmarks; judge it on your own setup.
Which platforms does it work with?
Stable connectors are available for Sierra Chart, NinjaTrader, and MotiveWave. Quantower and ATAS X connectors are in beta, and Tradovate uses a beta direct account connection with no add-on to install. The recorder captures any screen even without a connection. One note for NinjaTrader: capture NT8 chart windows by recording the whole monitor rather than the individual window. Connect your platform walks through each one.
Where does my footage go? I trade a funded account.
Nowhere. Recordings, clips, and notes exist only on your machine — no cloud, no uploads. Clips are ordinary local video files, the same as a screen recorder would produce (and like those files, they’re not encrypted at rest — see security & privacy).
Can it place trades or touch my account?
No. Recap reads trade events and has no capability to place, change, or cancel an order.
Why not just use OBS?
OBS records a session but does not identify your trades on its own, leaving one large file to scrub. Recap can use fills from a connected platform to create labeled clips and a searchable Library.
How do I get Recap?
Two ways in. Anyone can start a free 30-day trial with just an email. OrderFlow Labs members have Recap included — email [email protected] to claim it. Want general-availability news later? Join the launch list.
Is there a Mac version?
No — Recap runs on Windows 10/11 (64-bit) only.
Your next session can be your first film session.
Not ready to start a trial? Leave your email below to get a message when more ways to get Recap open up.