TradeBench is a totally free online trading journal and risk management tool. All features are unlocked for all users and there are no paid plans.
How does TradeBench get away with offering its services for free? By working with sponsors and asking its users to click an ad from time to time — a small price to pay for a tool that has the potential to make you a more successful trader.
Wondering if TradeBench is right for you? Read on to learn about its features and benefits.
Key Features of TradeBench
TradeBench is marketed as a trading journal, which is a great tool in its own right.
TradeBench offers far more than simple journaling functionality though. These are the most important features of its platform.
Automatic Trading Journal
The most profitable traders generally keep a trading journal and look back on it regularly in an effort to find pieces of their strategies that can be improved upon. But keeping a journal manually can be a cumbersome task, especially for beginners.
TradeBench’s automatic trading journal helps solve this problem.
The platform connects to your brokerage account, automatically journalling trade data every time a trade is closed. The service captures data like entry price, exit price, profit, and setup — giving you the ability to review and learn from your recent trading activity.
TradeBench’s trade journal feature allows you to generate reports with customizable parameters. That makes it easy to pinpoint the data you’re looking for and focus on the areas of your trading strategy that could use improvement. TradeBench lays out data in user-friendly, color-coded graphs that make it easier to understand what you’re looking at.
Supported Assets
TradeBench supports stocks, forex, and cryptocurrency.
It also supports contracts for differences (CFDs). A CFD buyer agrees to pay the seller the difference between the current value of an asset and the value of the asset upon expiration. If the value of the asset falls, the seller pays the difference to the buyer.
Risk & Money Management
Trading in financial markets is risky business, so traders must take active steps to mitigate the risk of loss. As a TradeBench user, you can input your risk parameters into the platform and use the proprietary risk management tools to determine:
- Maximum Risk Exposure. The platform can outline entry points and exit points so that you understand the maximum risk exposure you have with each trade.
- Position Sizing. TradeBench generates statistics-driven pointers on position sizing relevant to your risk tolerance and portfolio size for each trade.
- Diversification Needs. Finally, TradeBench provides tools for better diversification while actively trading.
Trade Planning
Planning is important in any process, especially when it comes to trading in financial markets.
Fortunately for its users, TradeBench makes trade planning a breeze. The platform uses algorithms to produce a trade plan summary that outlines the potential profit or loss and risk-to-reward ratios to help you better understand where your entry points and exit points should be.
TradeBench also provides trade planning checklists that automatically include several areas of interest you need to pay attention to when making a trade.
You can customize these checklists to better fit your trading strategy and use them as market screeners. For example, if you’re only interested in stocks trading with a minimum volume and a maximum price, you can type those parameters into the checklist and search the market for opportunities that meet them.
Open Trades Dashboard
TradeBench isn’t just for tracking data from previous trades and planning future trades. The platform can also track your open trades in real-time so that you can see how your portfolio is doing and make changes as necessary.
The Open Trades Dashboard features a “what if scenario” tool as well. This tool creates calculations based on open trades and potential exit points to help you determine when the best time to exit your position might be.
No matter if you’re trading long or short or have a single or multiple entries, the Open Trades Dashboard at TradeBench has the tools and functionality you need to improve your live trading activities.
Potential Trade Comparison Tools
As you trade, there will be times when you find yourself stuck at a fork in the road between two or more trades, unsure of which trade to execute for the best results.
For example, you might think ABC stock will break out to the upside and quickly gain value. However, if it fails to break out of its trading range, you know that it could fall dramatically. TradeBench has a tool that makes it a breeze to compare these options before you enter trades.
TradeBench outlines the data from the trade comparisons in a color-coded table. That makes it easy to quickly spot the trades that are likely to be the biggest winners and losers while avoiding more detailed technical analysis on trades likely to be duds.
Trading Simulator
Trading simulators are beneficial to beginners and experts alike, and TradeBench comes with a trading simulator that’s like nothing else on the market. Once you connect the TradeBench simulator to your brokerage, it mimics the features, available assets, and available trade types you’ll find in the brokerage’s live trading environment.
If you’re a beginner, you can use TradeBench’s simulator to ensure that you understand the trading process and have a strategy that works before risking your hard-earned money on live trades. If you’re an expert, you can use the simulator to test new strategies and ideas with less real-world risk.
P&L Charts
TradeBench makes it easy to quickly gauge your market performance with profit and loss (P&L) charts. The charts outline your entry cost, your exit price, and the profit or loss generated. For each trade, it shows this information in dollar amounts and in percentages.
Is TradeBench a Scam?
There’s quite a bit of chatter online about a potential TradeBench scam. We dug into the scam and found that TradeBench, the company that owns the TradeBench.com website, is a legitimate service that’s geared towards helping beginners and experts alike become more successful in financial markets for free.
However, there was a website found at TradeBench.Digital that was scamming traders out of their hard-earned money. Thankfully, TradeBench.Digital doesn’t exist anymore, but the scam left a stain on the TradeBench brand that may wrongfully deter some users from this robust trading tool.
Advantages of TradeBench
There are several advantages to taking advantage of the services offered by TradeBench. Some of the most significant perks to membership include:
- Automatically Track Stock, Forex, CFD, and Crypto Trades. Stock traders, forex traders, and cryptocurrency traders can all benefit from using the TradeBench platform, unlike many other trade journaling services that generally focus their services on a smaller group of assets, especially for free users.
- Everything’s Free. You might be asked to click an advertiser’s link or read an email from time to time, but TradeBench will never ask for your credit card number. All features are free, and there are no paid plans on the platform.
- Risk Management Tools. Risk management is crucial to the trading process. Traders who don’t employ risk management strategies can end up with exorbitant losses. The risk and money management tools on TradeBench go above and beyond the norm, showing that the company has a keen interest in its users’ success.
- Interactive Charts. TradeBench offers a wide range of interactive charts and technical indicators to help you find the best trade setups.
- Track Open Trades. Market conditions can change rapidly, which makes tracking multiple open trades difficult. The platform’s Open Trade Dashboard makes tracking multiple positions a breeze with charts, graphs, and tools that help you plan profitable exits.
Disadvantages of TradeBench
There aren’t many disadvantages to speak of when it comes to TradeBench. While some users may find it annoying to click an ad from time to time, the vast majority would likely rather click a few ads than shell out hard-earned cash for the service.
- Centered Around Trading. The only real drawback to the service is that it’s focused on trading, a high-risk process. Nonetheless, while the service is geared toward the active trader, long-term investors will also benefit greatly from some of the features available, especially the automated trading journal.
- Unrelated Scam Dinged TradeBench’s Reputation. For some time, TradeBench.Digital ran a scam called TradeBench. While TradeBench.com is a legitimate service that had nothing to do with the scam, the fact that a scam shared a name with the company dinged its reputation.
How TradeBench Stacks Up
One of TradeBench’s biggest competitors is TraderSync. Check out the table below to see how the two compare:
TradeBench | TraderSync | |
Price | TradeBench is always free for all features. | Pro. $29.95 per month Premium. $49.95 per month Elite. $79.95 per month13% discount when billed annually |
Risk Management & Trade Setup Tools | Yes | Yes |
Trading Simulator | Yes | Yes |
Share Trade Data | Share your trading journal with a single person or group of people. | Share customized trading reports with your mentor or followers. |
Final Word
TradeBench is a phenomenal tool that gives traders an edge on the competition. Beginners and experts alike can use the automated trading journal, risk and money management tools, and trade planning and research tools to become more successful traders.
While the TradeBench tool has the potential to increase your profitability, it’s not a silver bullet. It’s important to remember that trading is a short-term, speculative process that always comes with a higher level of risk than long-term investing based on well-researched fundamentals.
If you haven’t tried your hand as a long-term investor and earned a strong understanding of the mechanics of the stock market, it’s best to avoid trading entirely until you have more experience under your belt.