Edgewonk is an online trading journal designed to help active traders track and analyze their trading performance to find ways to optimize their trading plans. Using the service helps to make you a better trader. The platform makes plenty of tools available to visualize your improvements over time.
Unlike most trading journal services, there’s no free lunch at Edgewonk. You’ll have to pay $169 per year if you want access to the tool. The big question is, “Is the service worth the price?” Read on to find out.
Key Features of Edgewonk
Edgewonk is specifically designed for active traders like day traders and swing traders. The platform comes with a plethora of features that make tracking, managing, and analyzing your trading activity a breeze. There are also some nifty features that will help test your new and improved strategies before throwing your hard-earned money into the ring.
Here are some of the most exciting features you’ll find on the platform:
Easy Data Imports
Inputting trading data in a journal can be a cumbersome process if you’re an active trader, but you won’t have to with Edgewonk. The journal supports trading platforms and broker imports from 16 popular providers. Some supported brokers and platforms include TD Ameritrade, thinkorswim, MetaTraders 4 and 5, NinjaTraders 7 and 8, and TradeStation. A full list of supported brokers and platforms is available on the company’s website.
If you’re not working with one of the supported brokers, there’s another option. Many brokers and platforms let you export your trading data to Excel, and Edgewonk supports Excel imports. Simply export your data from your broker or platform to an Excel file and then import it into Edgewonk.
Trade Analytics
Keeping a trading journal is the first part of improving your trading performance. The next part is reviewing and analyzing the data you’ve kept in your journal.
Edgewonk’s interactive trade analysis tool is up to the job. The tool makes it easy to dissect and compare your trading data.
For example, say you’re interested in finding out how much of a role holding times play in your returns. Are shorter-term or longer-term trades producing better results? Simply filter your trades by time frame and you’ll end up with a color-coded table that will make it easy to see which trades work out best for you.
There are several other metrics you can use when analyzing and comparing your performance as well. Some include trade setups, trade exits, and stop-loss settings.
For example, you may find that you’re making late exits, leading to reduced returns. In this case, the trade analytics can alert you to the fact that your returns could be improved by adjusting your strategy to make your exits earlier.
Emotional Analytics
This is something we haven’t found with any other digital trading journal we’ve reviewed, and we’ve reviewed a ton of them! It’s easy to make bad decisions while you trade if you let your emotions get involved in the process, but few tools actually focus on trader emotions.
That’s where Edgewonk is different.
The platform offers three emotional analytics tools to help you learn to curb the emotional cues that may be making you a less profitable trader:
- Tiltmeter. Quickly spot when you’ve broken your trading rules in your trade data so you can make changes to stay on track when those types of events happen again.
- Discipline-Efficiency. Track your discipline in sticking to your trading rules with this easy-to-read graph that shows how often you deviate from your strategy over time.
- Trade Comments. Tag your trades with comments about how you can improve your process when emotional cues arise.
Trade Management Optimization
The Trade Management Optimizer digs through your data to see if you’re managing your trades in the best way possible. If not, it will provide tips and hints that will help you improve your trade management style.
For example, the tool may analyze your trades and find that you’re setting your take-profit orders too far from the current price, causing them to go unexecuted and leading to losses. In this case, the journal will show charts and provide data on where your take-profit orders should be placed to improve your chances of profitability.
Backtester
As you review your trading activity, you’ll likely make changes to your trading strategy. When you do, you won’t have to risk your money to test it out because Edgewonk comes with a backtester that shows you how your new strategy would have performed in the past.
Trade Simulator
The trade simulator is another way to test your trading strategy as it evolves. The simulator is a virtual environment based on real-time, real-life market data. You use virtual money to test your strategy in the simulator.
Use the trading simulator to see how your new strategy works in real-time under real market conditions. If your strategy produces a loss, no harm no foul. Go back to the drawing board and make a few changes. If your strategy proves to be a winner, you’re ready to use it in the live trading environment.
Entry & Exit Optimization
Trade entries and exits are the points at which you enter new trades and close open trades. The difference between entry and exit prices creates your profit and losses. So, you’ll want to optimize your entry and exit strategy as much as possible.
The entry and exit optimization tool at Edgewonk helps you optimize trade timing and lets you know what types of orders you should place when making trades. The platform even tells you where the optimal execution prices on stop-loss and limit orders might be.
Milestone Challenges
There are several aspects to the trading process, and changing them all at once is difficult if not impossible. Edgewonk offers milestone challenges to help you focus on one area of your trading strategy at a time, creating a more effective way to improve your trading behavior over time.
Small adjustments to your trading style lead to the completion of Edgewonk milestones. Once one milestone is complete, you’ve adjusted your behavior and you’re ready to start focusing on improvements in another area.
Advantages of Edgewonk Trading Journal
Edgewonk is much more than your average trading journal. The platform’s features are geared toward simplifying trade analytics, checking emotions at the door, and setting and achieving your goals. Some of the biggest advantages to the platform are:
- Emotional Tools. Emotions in investing can devastate your returns, but there aren’t enough tools online to help you learn how to manage them. Edgewonk paid close attention to this aspect of trading, providing three different tools to help traders improve in this area.
- Tracks Several Financial Assets. The trading journal supports stocks, forex, futures, contracts for difference (CFDs), commodities, and crypto assets.
- Trade Chart Book. Take advantage of the Trade Chart Book tool to organize your trading screenshots.
- Track Your Performance. See your winning and losing trades over time at a glance to see how your performance has improved. The platform also makes it easy to visualize your win rate improvements over time.
- Organize Your Trades by Time. Trading sessions can be broken into daily, weekly, or monthly time periods, showing you how you’ve improved over different lengths of time.
- Backtester. Backtesting isn’t provided by most trading journals, and it’s a welcome feature at Edgewonk.
Disadvantages of Edgewonk Trading Journal
There are plenty of advantages to signing up for Edgewonk, but there are a few drawbacks to consider too. The most significant include:
- No Free Membership Plan. Most trading journals offer a limited free membership plan, but that’s not available here. You’ll have to pay for a membership if you want access to the company’s tools.
- Data Takes a While. It will likely take weeks, if not months, to compile enough data to start finding meaningful trends in your trading activity to be able to act upon it.
- Trading Risks. Trading is a high-risk concept and Edgewonk is all about actively trading. The company’s website and services are designed to make trading simpler and more effective but may insinuate that trading is easier than it is for those considering getting involved.
How Edgewonk Stacks Up
TradesViz is one of Edgewonk’s biggest competitors. Here’s how the two trading journals compare:
| Edgewonk | TradesViz | |
| Price | $169 | Free — no paid plans |
| Backtesting Available | Yes | No |
| Emotional Analytics Tools | Yes | No |
| Trade Management & Risk Optimization | Yes | Yes |
Final Word
Is the Edgewonk service worth the price? We can give you a definitive yes. Whether you’re day trading or swing trading, just starting out or a professional trader, there’s quite a bit to benefit from with an Edgewonk membership.
The service’s cost of $169 per year works out to just over $14 per month. The unique emotional evaluation tools on the platform are worth that price by themselves.
Sure, there are free trading journal options online, but most are limited and none compare well to Edgewonk. If you’re looking for one of the best trading journals online — one that can analyze your data and point you in the right direction, help you set and track milestones, and ultimately improve your trading performance — you’ve found it with Edgewonk.