New users almost never ask "how do I use this." They ask what they're supposed to do differently starting today. Honestly, for week one: almost nothing. The first week on CoTrader is about connecting your data and letting it build up, not about changing how you trade.
The whole first week, in three steps — this is the map for the sections below.
Day one: connect and import
Link your IBKR account and CoTrader pulls your existing trade history in the background. If you've been trading for months, that history is already there and already organized the moment setup finishes — you're not starting from zero. The whole thing takes a few minutes, and it's the only manual step in the entire week.
Days two through six: trade like you normally do
Here's where most people slip up. It's tempting to open CoTrader constantly in week one, watching for Callouts to appear, checking whether today's trade "looks good" in the app. Resist it. Callouts need enough trades behind a pattern before they're trustworthy, and a rule firing off two data points is noise, not a pattern. The best move for days two through six is trading your normal process and letting fills sync in the background. You'll barely notice CoTrader running — that's the point.
If you do check in, the Journal is the useful place to look. Not for insights yet, just to confirm fills are syncing correctly and entries look the way you'd expect.
Day seven: your first Weekly Review
The week pays off here. Your first Weekly Review pulls real numbers from real trades — net P&L, win rate, average trade — no demo account, no sample data. It won't have enough history to say much definitive about your patterns yet, but it'll already be more organized than most traders' mental picture of their own week.
Treat that first review as a baseline, not a verdict. One week tells you what happened. It takes several before Callouts have enough to say anything about why.
What changes after week one
By week two or three, patterns start becoming visible: a symbol you're consistently better at, a time of day that quietly costs you, a habit around losing trades worth naming. A single week never shows any of that. Its only job is to get out of the way and let the data start piling up.