Be Profitable With Edgewonk - Your Professional Trading Journal

Hi traders,
still not believing that system hopping is actually killing your trading? Why don't you try to make ONE strategy work instead of randomly trying out system after system.

Stop Looking For Different Trading Systems. Make The One You Have Work. This Is How.

“Why do I need a trading journal when I just need to find a better trading strategy to become a winning trader?” Or, “what is the use of a trading journal if my method is not working?” These are common questions we get asked a lot. We found that there is a huge difference between losing and winning traders that we have come to known working with hundreds of different traders.

Whereas the traders who are struggling and have inconsistent trading results always look for “better systems” or more accurate entry signals, the traders who make money consistently try to improve the one trading strategy they already have. The winning traders didn’t just stumble over a winning trading strategy, but they found ways to turn their strategy into a winning one. How?

Your trading strategy and your trading journal go hand in hand

Obviously, a trading strategy is necessary to trade. A strategy tells you what to do and when to do it and it also defines the risk parameters. However, trading without a trading journal is like driving a racecar and crashing in the same curve again and again and again without trying to find reasons. Were you too fast, did you take the curve in a too steep angle, did you drive with the wrong tires? If you don’t observe what went wrong and try to find ways to overcome your problems, you will keep crashing.

A professional trading journal is the component of your trading that shows you what is not working. It reveals your greatest and most costly mistakes and it provides actionable tips how to lose less and how to win more.



To be more specific, here is how a trading journal helps improve your trading strategy:
1- It identifies your greatest mistakes and calculates how much you are leaving on the table by repeating mistakes. Finally, it shows you when you are most likely to make a mistake so that you can be aware of this and avoid it.
2 – A trading journal analyzes how you place stop loss and take profit orders. If you are setting your stops too far away, you are reducing the ratio between winners and losers. If you set your stops too close, stop hunting and retracements can take you out. Take profit targets which are too far away result in a lower winrate and targets that are too close cut your winners short. A trading journal analyzes your order placement automatically and takes out the guesswork.
3 – Once in a trade, most trading strategies do not provide detailed and actionable tips on what to do with your trade. A trading journal analyzes your trade management and then shows you how to engage with your trades to maximize your profits.
4 – An important part of a trading strategy is risk management and position sizing. A trading journal not only analyzes whether your positions are too small or too big, but it also provides insights about how different position sizing strategies impact your account volatility.
And the list goes on (here is a list of 18 ways how a trading journal improves your trading strategy). Traders who trade without a trading journal are just hoping to somehow, accidentally find a trading strategy that works. The traders with a trading journal make their own luck and turn their strategy into a winning one.

The one mistake that is keeping traders from profitable trading – riding the learning curve
Everyone knows those traders which have been involved with the markets for years, but who are still struggling and their trading results are not there where they should be. And there is nothing to be ashamed about and it is completely understandable. Most of the time, nobody has ever told them that their perception of trading is inaccurate and that they could overcome their problems by just following one simple concept: stop changing trading systems!

Frequently changing trading systems and never really committing to one thing is probably among the most crucial mistakes a trader can make. If you want to become a professional athlete you can’t start playing today tennis, then next week switch to golf and two weeks later start boxing – the chance that you will find a sport where you can be a professional right from the start are very small.

In trading it’s the same. The professional and winning trader understands that no trading strategy will work from the beginning. The winning trader knows that by constantly tweaking and making adjustments, based on what his trading journal is telling him and not by guessing, he can slowly and steadily turn his trading strategy into a winning system.

Whenever you change from one strategy to another one, you have to start from scratch. You have to re-learn how to identify entries, how to react to changing market conditions, how to set stop loss and take profit orders and find a trade management strategy. But what happens is that, instead of finding a better system, traders are caught in the vicious cycle of hopping from one system to another without ever seeing any real results.

Break the cycle and discover your edge
Now it is up to you. Most traders first have to go through the so called system-hopping phase until they realize that successful trading is more than finding the ‘right system’. You can download our free e-book which helps you learn about the 7 step process to finding the perfect trade.

Enjoy your weekend,
Moritz

Hi traders,

if you ever wondered what the shortest way to success in trading was, we will tell you now: hard and relentless work. However, if you structure your approach you can save a lot of sweat and pain.

The Formula To Accomplishing Big Things. 5 Steps That Will Take You From Losing To Winning Trader

How do you build something big? You start small. This principle is true for everything in life: The Great Wall of China has been built by laying one brick at a time. A highway is built by completing one mile after the other. The invention of the airplane didn’t just happen, but it was the result of years of trial and error. You don’t become a professional athlete over night, but by making small progress and by being consistent.

And it’s the same in trading. The person who is looking for shortcuts is going nowhere. The trader who decides to put in the work and is dedicated to making it work, will succeed eventually.

How to become the best trader? The 5 steps that will take you from losing to winning trader
You don’t ask yourself “how can I make a million bucks by the end of the year?” Asking such questions can be very intimidating and even harmful to your success because they make it seem like an impossible task. How can you make a million Dollars if you can’t even stop losing?



Therefore, start by asking,” how can I make $10, or $50 consistently?”, if you find a way to make $50 week after week, you can easily find ways to make $200 a week. And then you can slowly step it up and take it to $300 or $400 a week.

Ever wondered why they say “making the first million is the hardest”? It’s exactly for that reason. First, you have to prove yourself that you can make $10. Once you can SEE that YOU can make money AT ALL, the rest becomes much easier and clearer. With confidence, certainty comes.

Step 1 – you have to lose less
Although this might not sound like a big achievement, it is the first step towards becoming a profitable trader. Most people have these huge losses where they risked 20%, 30% or even more on a single trade, averaged into losing positions or widened their stop loss multiple times. If you want to become a profitable trader you have to make sure that you don’t experience such losses first.

Step 2 – you trade as a break-even trader
Once you eliminate the giant losses from your trading, becoming a break-even trader (where your wins and losses are roughly the same size) is much, much easier. Be quick to close a losing trade and don’t be too greedy on your winners. Avoid making mistakes and try to follow your rules as closely as possible to stop losing money. Just imagine what your account balance would look like if you had avoided all those trades you knew you shouldn’t be in.

Step 3 – your wins just barely offset your losses. No yachts yet.
So far you have managed to avoid the giant losses that are responsible for trading failure. You also tried to avoid the little mistakes and tried to stick to your rules more and more.

Now it’s time to make a little dent in your equity curve. This is done by being auditing your trading behavior. What is your greatest problem? Where are you struggling the most? What is costing you the most money and where do you lack a clear plan?

Review your trading performance and your trading behavior to spot weaknesses. Are you good at entries, but exits are still a problem area? Are you unsure of how to manage your trades once you are in them? Are you sometimes risking too much? Do you revenge-trade from time to time and get your ego involved? Do you trade based on other people’s opinions?

Focusing on one area at a time and really digging into your trading to find these areas where you are leaving money on the table or still have room for improvement, will slowly lift off your equity curve.

Keep in mind, prove to yourself that you can predictably make $50 or $100 per month first – whatever seems reasonable. We are not shooting for the stars, yet.

Step 4 – you learn to win a bit more
Once you can find ways to make $100 a month, you have proven to yourself that making money in trading is actually possible – compare it to your current state; how big of a shift would it be if you could go from where you are now to making $100 a month consistently?
Now it’s time to scale it up. How do you take your trading to the next level?

A trader can choose from a variety of possibilities of how to scale his trading performance. Here are just a few:

1. Increase the size of your winners by optimizing your reward:risk ratio
2. Improve how you take exits
3. Learn when to cut losers short with optimized stop loss placement
4. Audit yourself. What are your greatest weaknesses and challenges that you haven’t eliminated yet?
5. Filter out unprofitable setups and/or instruments with the help of your performance data
6. Optimize your position sizing to get bigger winners, smaller losers and to reduce account volatility
7. Generate more entry signals: add new markets or move down time-frames.
8. Adapt your trading style to changing market conditions

Pick one area at a time and find ways how you can improve. Don’t try to do everything at once.

Rinse and repeat
An effective trading journal process is the most important tool you have when really trying to improve your trading. You trade, you analyze, you get a feedback, and then decide how to incorporate that feedback into your strategy, or not, depending on what the feedback says. Once you have mastered one area of your strategy, go take a look at another area to optimize. And once you optimized all possible areas of your strategy, keep monitoring, and always be on the lookout for potholes. Success in trading is not a point that you can reach, but an ever-repeating process. If you stop working, you will stop making money immediately. So, rinse and repeat.

Hello traders,

today we released Edgewonk 1.5 (free of cost for existing customers), which includes a bunch of new features you, our customers, requested.
The update will further cement Edgewonk as the industry leader in professional journaling, no matter which markets and which instrument you trade.

Take a look at the update here https://www.edgewonk.com/edgewonk-tr...ournal-update/ and feel free to test our free trial!

Bests,
Moritz

Hi traders,

there are many ways in which we try to cope with emotions in our trading. Most of them fail, though. Here we got 4 tips that have proven over time their reliability and effectiveness. Enjoy!

4 Tips To Minimize The Impact Of Emotions On Your Trading Instantly

Emotions are without a doubt one of the biggest influencing factors in your daily trading. Emotions and emotionally influenced trading are responsible for revenge-trading, chasing losses, missing good trades, letting losses get out of hand and many more trading decisions that cost traders money. If you want to know more take a look at our emotions cheat sheet.

Just think about your performance, how would your trading account look like if you hadn’t taken all those trades that were against your rules? (Hint: if you have no idea, maybe it’s time to join Edgewonk and find out how much your emotions are really costing you)

In order for you to avoid the most common emotionally caused trading mistakes, there are 4 things that can instantly help you to step up your game and minimize the impacts emotions have:

1. Separate charting from execution
This tip alone can, and will, make a big impact on your trading game. To avoid kneejerk reactions, close your trading platform after you have entered your trade; don’t just minimize it, but close it for good. Then open another platform for charting where you observe your trades without having the possibility to move around orders, add to the trade or close it prematurely. Of course, you could just open your trading platform and mess around with your trade, but this approach adds a barrier and makes you aware of your trading decisions.

You don’t need to open another brokerage account. Free charting sites like Tradingview.com are ideal as a charting platform.

2. Walk away from your desk
To make this point work, make sure you have your stop loss and take profit orders in place so that not much can happen when you walk away. Often, when we sit in front of our screens too long, we get too attached to the trades we take. Watching every tick of your trades usually always leads to decisions that should have been avoided.

Walking away from your desk and doing something completely different for only a few minutes is a technique used by many performance coaches. It takes your mind off the subject and when you come back, you have a completely different perspective.

3. Man up and control yourself
To develop discipline, you just have to do the thing you want. You want to know more about business, then you have to study and start your own business; you want to get in shape, you have to start exercising and eat better; you want to become a more disciplined trader, then you have to exercise discipline.

For the next month, make a commitment to not touch your trades after opening them. And regardless of what you think would be the best thing to do with your trade, you don’t do it. You just sit back and let price do what it is going to do. For that month, write down exactly what you would have done, why and how it would have impacted your performance.

You will see that in 99% of the time, what you think would have been the best thing to do in a certain situation, usually always leads to bad trading.

4. Take your eyes off the charts and journal
The last tip is also a very effective one because it takes your mind immediately off your trades and greatly helps you refocus.

After you have entered your trade, open your Edgewonk trading journal and enter your trading data into your journal. This will not only help you use your trading time more effectively, but it will also help you get a different view on your trades.

Entering the trades into your journal reminds you of what your trade goal and thought process was. When you then get back to your charts, you are more certain and aware of what your trade plan is and you are more likely to follow through.

Now the ball is in your court
Although you will never be able to eliminate emotions completely from your trading, you can significantly change how they impact your trading. By following the described tips, you can instantly reduce the influencing power of emotions.


Have a great trading week!
Moritz

Can your systems link to existing live and/ or demo brokerage accounts and upload trading history for review and analysis? If not, why not? Thanks.

Hi traders,
as it is common "wisdom" in trading, higher timeframes are easier to trade. Is it really true for everyone, though? While of course you have a lot more time to analyze setups and reduce snap-decisions, you will have to deal with a whole lot of other problems.

Are Higher Time-Frames Really Easier To Trade? 3 Reasons That Signal The Opposite

The myths of high time-frames
There are many myths in retail trading but the one that trading higher time-frames is easier is probably among the most talked about. Is it really true? Does trading higher time-frames allow you to “look through the noise” and see the “real” price action, as the advocates of higher time-frames suggest?! In the following we discuss 3 reasons why trading high time-frames can actually be harder and lead to bad trading.

Why it’s not true #1: Patience and trade entries
The most obvious reason why trading high time-frames is often more difficult is because of the patience that is required from the trader. By default, most amateur traders struggle with patience and entering trades too early, not waiting for all entry criteria to be present or being bored and randomly entering trades is already one of the main reasons why so many traders fail.

Moving to higher time-frames where entry signals are even less frequent will rarely do any good. If you get 3 trades per day on the 1H time-frame, you might only get 1 trade every 2 weeks on the Daily time-frame. Imagine having to wait 2 weeks for a single trade and patiently sitting on your hands. You might say “well, then I just add more markets to my watchlist” to counter this effect – we will discuss the impacts of such an approach under point #3.
If you are already struggling with patience in your trading, moving to higher time-frames will usually not go well with your personality.

Why it’s not true #2: A longer holding time and in-trade decisions
Let’s say you have waited patiently for a few weeks to get your trade entry. Now you are presented with a completely new set of problems. Trading the Daily time-frame means that you have to hold trades for days and often weeks. Amateur traders struggle a lot when it comes to trade management and in-trade decisions. Having to sit through retracements that can last for several days can become a real challenge then. Or, holding a winning trade for days and weeks and patiently keeping your trigger-finger off the mouse and not closing the trade prematurely can be really hard.

If you have problems with letting your winning trades run and easily get nervous when price moves against you, trading high time-frames will compound this effect.

Why it’s not true #3: You can’t just watch more markets
One argument of the advocates of higher time-frames is that you can just watch more markets to counter the effect of a longer waiting time. Unfortunately, it is usually not that easy. Different markets behave very differently and your trading methodology has to be adjusted for each market.
Volatility, how markets respond to price action, general price and momentum dynamics can vary significantly between different markets. A trader who tries to apply his trading methodology like a template across different markets often sees very mixed results.

The choice of time-frames is very personal. How Edgewonk can help
One size fits all does not apply to trading and the choice of your time-frame. You have to be self-aware and audit your strengths and weaknesses. While some traders might do better on higher time-frames, other traders will outperform on the lower time-frames.
With Edgewonk, we usually advise our users to set up one Custom Statistic to track the different time-frames; for every trade you take, assign the time-frame which you choose to make the trade entry. With the help of the Edgewonk analytics you can then find out exactly which time-frames work best for you and where you struggle the most. Edgewonk helps you take out the guesswork and shows you what is really working for you!



We offer a free trial for the Edgewonk trading journal. Test it for free and see how it can help your trading:
Edgewonk free trial

As always,
thank you for your time & have a nice weekend,
Moritz

Hi R19,

while we are big proponents of entering trades manually in order to increase the learning effect hundredfold, we are developing an auto-import feature that will be great for the "lazier" of people .

Make sure to subscribe to our free trial to get to know when the new update is out.

Bests,
Moritz

Hi traders,

as traders we have to learn fast and efficiently to maximally exploit our learning curve and shorten the time to profitability, before we run out of steam. Knowing at which stage of the following 5 you are, will give you a push in the right direction. Have fun reading!

The 5 Stages Every Trader Goes Through On Their Way To Profitable Trading

There are 5 stages every trader will go through over the years. You can’t skip one and knowing which one you are in and being totally honest with yourself is essential.

Unconscious incompetence
This is the initial phase of a newbie trader when he is just getting his feet wet in the markets and looks at his trading platform for the first time. At that stage, a trader doesn’t know how much he doesn’t know, which can often be a liberating, but dangerous place to be in.

His trading decisions are pretty much still a gamble and not backed by a sophisticated decision-making process; although the unconscious incompetent trader will never admit that – he doesn’t know any better yet.

A few characteristics of the unconscious incompetent trader:

1. He randomly opens and exits trades without a defined trading system
2. He changes his “approach” on a trade to trade basis
3. He does not apply risk management or position sizing principles
4. He often changes his trade direction on the spot and chases price
5. He gets motivated by winning trades and does not care much about losses
6. Beginners luck is what keeps him going
7. One loss often wipes out all previous wins

At this stage, the traders with beginners luck are more likely to keep going and make it to the next stage. Often, however, traders lose money, get easily discouraged and acknowledge that trading isn’t as easy as clicking a mouse.

Conscious incompetence
Now it dawns on the trader how little he knows and he starts to understand that he has to put in the work and study more. Motivated by a few lucky winners, he studies everything he can get his hands on.

A trader who still loses money consistently, even after spending a lot of time learning about trading, will often start blaming his tools, the wrong indicators, missing information or unfair markets; he is looking for external excuses.

This stage of conscious incompetence is the one that lasts the longest. Some traders will never leave this stage, even after years of being involved in the markets. A few principles and questions can make you aware of potential problems in your trading mindset and general approach:

1. Have I changed my trading system more than once in the last 6 months without really putting in the work?
2. Am I actively reviewing my trades to find out what is going wrong?
3. Am I still making impulsive trading mistakes that cost a lot of money?
4. Do I repeat the same trading mistakes over and over again?

Sit down and try to answer these questions. Be honest with yourself even if the truth hurts. Lying to yourself will keep you trapped in your current state and you won’t be able to improve and evolve as a trader.

The Aha moment
It sounds cliché but this is the time when the trader accepts responsibility for his actions. He understands that all his past mistakes and false behavior will not get him anywhere. If a trader is really serious about making this work, there is typically only one way and the following principles describe the “new” mindset:

1. He stops changing systems and focuses on making the one he has work
2. He starts monitoring his behavior to find negative behavioral patterns
3. He follows a daily trading routine, starts keeping a trading plan and a trading journal
4. He understands that entries are just one part of his system and that, in order to become profitable, he has to work on all components of his system

Conscious competence
The trader now starts to realize what trading is all about. Although trading is still not easy and his results are far from being perfect, he understands the importance of process-oriented thinking. He stops focusing on only the outcome of his trades.

Traders at this stage are typically break-even traders and slowly start to turn their equity graph up. Discipline, emotions and adequate risk management are of utmost importance at this stage and a long-term approach will keep the trader from falling back into old habits.

The trading journal becomes his most important companion at this stage because it provides an objective look at his performance and behavior.

Unconscious competence
This is when trading becomes boring – and trading should be boring! At this stage, the trader has spent years of looking at screens and taking the same setups hundreds or even thousands of times. He knows exactly how his preferred setup looks like and trading becomes a waiting game.

At this stage, the trader has fully internalized that he can’t win every trade and, more importantly, he does not really care about losses as long as he has followed his rules. Trading is now an activity of pattern recognition, risk management and constant self-improvement.

The unconscious competent trader has a thirst for self-improvement and constantly studies the markets. He evaluates the effectiveness of his method. His trading journal is now the most solid foundation of his money making business. He can turn to it whenever the markets throw a curveball at him.

Which stage are you at right now?
Being a trader is a life-long journey of self-improvement and self-discovery. The markets teach you something about yourself every day. In fact, a trading plan that makes money for a trader is simply the extension of his own personality with all its qualities and imperfections.

Your task right now – if you are not a consistently profitable trader yet – is to sit down and take a deep look at yourself. Then try to answer the following question: which stage are you at right now?

Try to answer this question as best and honest as you can. The moment you answer this question, and draw the consequences from it, you will be on your path to improving your trading bit by bit until one day you will finally reach controlled profitability.

You are stuck with your trading!? Take a look at our 12 week program where we help you discover what is holding you back and keeping you from moving to the next stage.

As always, take care.
Moritz

Hi traders,

it's the last month of the year. Time to review the last 12 months. When reviewing, are you constantly asking yourself whether another trade management, SL or TP approach to your strategy could have performed better? Edgewonk can tell you precisely.

Why Do You Make Mistakes? Finding Out What You Should Be Doing With Your Trades

From our work with hundreds of traders we found out that many traders have good intentions when they enter a trade, but once in a trade, things often go wrong. With Edgewonk we have developed a variety of different features and functions that analyze how you manage your trades so that you can find out what you should be doing.

When Edgewonk tells you what to do to maximize performance and minimize errors, it helps you avoid confusion and eliminates guesswork. Traders can then trade from a state of pure confidence and make much better decisions.


Set and forget – what to do in a trade
Especially for new traders, the “set and forget” approach can often make a big difference in their trading. Set and forget means that after you have entered your trade, set your stop and take profit orders, you simply do not touch the trade again until the stop loss or take profit is hit; the Trade Management area in Edgewonk analyzes your active trade management decisions.

The set and forget approach has two goals. First, it is the best way to build discipline. Once in a trade, traders are always hoping that a current loss could still turn into a profit or are worried that a current profit could turn into a loss. Then, these traders move around stop loss and take profit orders based on emotional responses and not based on sound price analysis. The set and forget approach forces you to sit on your hands and be patient – an important characteristic for every professional trader.

Second, in the Trade Management sheet of your Edgewonk trading journal, we analyze your potential performance. The yellow graph visualizes your performance if you hadn’t touched your trades after having entered them – the set and forget approach. This feature helps you understand if your trade management actions are really improving your performance or if they are making things worse.



Building discipline and identifying the best trade management approach are two things that can make a big difference in your trading.

Alternative Strategies – answering the what-if question
Traders are always wondering “what if!?” What if I would use a different stop loss strategy, what if I would apply another take profit method, what if I would enter your trades a bit earlier? Almost every trader has those nagging thoughts which can lead to sloppy trading and inconsistent results because they are always questioning their trading approach.



Edgewonk is aware of this immense problem and that’s why we have created the Alternative Strategies. With the help of the Alternative Strategies you can simultaneously analyze different stop loss, take profit, entry and trade management methods.

Instead of opening a new trading account and tediously copying your trades using different ideas, simply analyze how a different approach would have performed and note the outcome in the Alternative Strategies. Edgewonk then compares the performance to your actual trading performance and you can see exactly what the best approach for your trading style is.

The Alternative Strategies are a time-saving solution to help you get rid of doubts and eliminate nagging questions. By understanding what you should be doing, you gain confidence and a new sense of clarity.

No more “what-if” and second-guessing
We at Edgewonk understand the struggles traders have on a day to day basis. By eliminating uncertainty and analyzing the best possible trading approach for your trading style, Edgewonk helps you develop new confidence which will then turn into much better trading decisions. A trader who does not have to worry about what he could be doing can focus on what is really going to make a difference in his trading – executing the best possible trades without having doubts.

Do you think you have problems with trade management and are not sure what to do once you are in a trade? Take a look at our 12-week trader development program where we help you uncover and overcome your weaknesses step by step.

Good success in the last month of the 2015!
Moritz

Hi traders, and Happy New Year! We assume everyone survived the festivities more or less, so now it's time to get back in the saddle and make some cash in 2016. How? Read on.

How To End The Year 2015 And Set Yourself Up For Trading Success In 2016

Use the time when financial markets are in holiday mood and analyze your past year and find ways to improve your trading. The following points show you exactly how to end the year on a high note and how to position yourself for a great new year. “I wish I had been more committed this year” is a phrase that many people will say during this time of the year. Don’t let another year pass by without taking the actions you know will bring success. We show you how to make the next 365 days count, so that on December 31st 2016 you can look back satisfied and with improved trading results.

Step 1 – Find weaknesses and strengths in your trading – consulting the metrics
Numbers don’t lie and that’s why we consult the Edgewonk metrics first. But we go much deeper than just looking at your return data and see which direction your equity graph points to. Here are 5 important metrics from your Edgewonk trading journal and how to interpret them to get new insights about your performance and behavior.


Average Gain, average loss and risk
The average gain and average loss already tells you a lot. In your Performance Tables, activate the filter for winner and loser (separately) and take a look at the column “Avg. Gain”. A problem many traders have is that their general approach is promising, but when their average loss exceeds their average gain, it can signal problems that could be overcome quickly (we will dig deeper later).


The “Avg. Gain” column shows the average size of winners and losers

Then, take a look at your “Avg. Risk” numbers which are a proxy for position size and the highest potential loss on your trades. Again, if you see major differences between winners and losers, or if you can spot individual outliers on setups or instruments, it signals problems in your risk management.


The “Avg Risk” column is a proxy for position size and the maximum possible loss

The emotional aspect – the Tiltmeter
The Tiltmeter visualizes your discipline and your (in)ability to follow your rules. First, take a look at your equity graph and evaluate the red bars you can see in the background – they are the visualization of your Tiltmeter. Ideally, the Tiltmeter should be low; a decreasing Tiltmeter can also signal that your discipline has improved over time; or, can you see that when your equity curve goes down, the Tiltmeter rises? All those clues can help you find negative trading patterns.



Apply different filters to the equity graph to see how the Tiltmeter changes. When it rises the lot, those are the times you need to work on yourself most.

Comments tab – Finding weaknesses II
The Comments tab shows the analytics for your tags, emotions and other emotional aspects. In the Comments tab you see how often you have assigned specific comments and also their aggregate performance.
Find the comments you have assigned the most and the ones with the worst performance. After you identified where you are leaking money, you can start working on your very own personal problems. Often, traders are not even aware of their problems and what is costing them money – Edgewonk takes out the guesswork.



Trading behavior – Trade Management
The Trade Management tab in Edgewonk analyzes your trading behavior, how you execute your orders and your trades in general. Often, traders see that their green Trade Management graph is above their red one which signals problems in your trade management.
When the green line is above the red line, your potential performance is greater than your actual performance; you close trades early or let losers run too long. Let your trades run without interfering with them and you can potentially increase your performance.

Achieving stable account growth – The Edgewonk Simulator
The Terminal shows your account volatility and the Sortino ratio which both provide information about risk and how (un)stable your account growth is.
Then go to the Simulator and take a look at your simulated future performance. The Simulator takes your current trading performance and simulates the outcome of 500 trades based on your metrics. Press the F9 key to start a new simulation. The Simulator provides insights about your potential account growth. Apply different filters to the Simulator and see which types of trades have the greatest volatility. Then, either avoid those riskier trades or work on their performance to smooth out your equity curve and to achieve a better growth.


A setup with a lot of volatility and unstable account growth.


Another setup with fewer drawdown and less volatility.

Step 2 – Be honest with yourself. A reality check
Honesty and self-awareness are two of the main attributes of professional traders and high performers. Only if you are honest with yourself, you can identify challenges and work on what is holding you back. Here are 4 questions that will help you grow as a trader:

Do you journal regularly?
How disciplined are you when it comes to journaling trades? Do you often skip your journaling sessions or do it half-heartedly?



Ask yourself: how much does trading mean to you? How much do you really want to become a professional trader? It takes 2 minutes to enter a trade into Edgewonk. Is it worth spending 2 minutes per trade to turn your trading around? Don’t let another year pass and then tell yourself “I wish I had taken 30 minutes each week to journal all my trades. I would be a much better trader by now.”
>> How tracking trades turns every trader into a professional faster

Are you still a system-hopper?
When was the last time you have changed your trading method and your whole approach? How often have you change it in 2015 alone? The professionals know that no system will work right from the start. Pick one system, learn as much as you can about it, consult your Edgewonk journal to find weaknesses and ways to improve it, and then make it work.



Do you listen to your rules?
How disciplined are you? Do you make the same mistakes over and over again? Do you learn from past setbacks or do you keep making the same things?
Most traders don’t learn from their mistakes and they are always operating in the amateur mindset. They break their entry rules, enter trades based on guessing, widen their stop loss, add to losers, take too much risk, change systems every month and gamble with their trading account. They don’t have a trading routine, do not keep a trading plan, don’t perform a pre-market analysis, don’t journal and do not review their past trades.

I always say you could publish rules in a newspaper and no one would follow them. The key is consistency and discipline. – Richard Dennis
Be honest. Does this describe your trading approach? We are not here to bring you down; we want to raise awareness about the common problems of traders. Use the end of the year to evaluate your approach.

Did you make progress in 2015?
Most traders try to sugarcoat their trading which keeps them from moving forward. Did your make progress in 2015 or are you just telling it to yourself? Are you continuously losing? Does your trading reflect the professional attitude you are after? Or are you gambling and hoping to somehow make this work? Do you believe that you just have to find the RIGHT system?

We know that the answers to those questions can be painful, but there is no other way to grow and improve. You don’t want to arrive at December, 31st 2016 and still wonder why you are only losing money and not making any.

Step 3 – The right goals and moving forward
Now comes the part where you decide, based on how you answered all previous points, how to make 2016 YOUR year. Here is our top 5 list that will help you reach your goals faster and empower you to make significant progress in 2016.
“This one step – choosing a goal and sticking to it – changes everything.” – Scott Reed

1. Be methodical about your trading
What are the things you have learned about your trading by consulting the Edgewonk metrics? What are your greatest problems and what is costing you the most money? Now, make a list of your 5 biggest performance killers and put it next to your trading desk where you can see them. The change in your trading performance will be significant.

2. Create a trading routine
The reason why most traders still look like amateurs and beginners, even after years of trading, is because they do not follow a routine and are in reactionary mode. We have talked about the power of following a routine before and you should create your own for the year 2016.
>> How to start your trading day like a pro [free download inside]

3. Become the expert in your field
This is an important point. STOP SYSTEM HOPPING. Your goal for 2016 should be to become the expert in your field. What is your trading methodology? Are you a trend-follower, do you look for breakouts, do you fade trends or do you trade based on fundamentals? Whatever it is, pick the ONE THING you want to be good at and make it work. The progress you will see if you are really committed and focus on just one thing will be huge.
“Be like a postage stamp— stick to one thing until you get there.” – Gary Keller

The Tiltmeter challenge
In our 12 week program, the Tiltmeter challenge is the first challenge because we know about the importance and the impact it will have on a trader’s performance. Whatever you do, always try to keep your Tiltmeter as low as possible. Focus on making the best trades possible and the money will follow.

Be realistic
Most traders have unrealistic expectations and dreams when it comes to trading and their own journey which then leads to even worse results and a lot of frustration.
If you can’t make money in trading right now, wouldn’t it be great if you could start becoming a break-even trader in 2016 and be more disciplined about your trading? And if you are an already experienced trader, you should look for ways to improve your edge to perfect your method.

Becoming a better trader is about making steady progress and always focusing on the next step. Having wrong expectations and then not seeing the results creates a negative feedback loop.
>> The 5 steps to becoming a profitable trader

Now it is up to you. Knowing what to do is typically the easy part – but actually doing it is what separates the professionals from the amateurs. How much do you want to become a better trader? And what are you willing to do for it?

We hope our guide helped you see the things clearer and that you now know how to approach your trading to turn the next 12 months into a period of success, growth and a lot of fun trading the markets.

Your Edgewonk Team

Seems like an interesting product.
I've downloaded the demo. Is there a way to upload trades into Edgewonk? like csv ? or xls? or someother format
or does it expect the user to enter one by one?

Didn't know that you guys have a treadh on FF !!
I have purchased their software 3 week ago, definitly the best money i have ever spent on a trading software
The software is stable, no crush or hiccup, and the journal is awesome, with literally dozens of options and statistics it really gives you an edge, plus their assistance is incredibly fast.
100%recommend, expecially for new traders

Moong. i know that their are working on this ... but, imho, put the trade manually in, review one by one, is part of the learning process

Refreshing idea. Will try it out.