The set and forget approach

The potential performance is based on the “set and forget approach”. This means that after a trade has been placed, you don’t touch it again until price either reaches your take profit or stop loss order. Thus, when you see the green graph above the brown graph, you could simply improve your trading if you stop moving around your orders after opening your trade and just let price do its thing.

We use the set and forget approach as a premise because big problem traders have is that they mismanage their trades. By comparing their actual performance to the set and forget approach you can immediately see if what you are doing is the “right” thing.

Edgewonk gives you the confidence to stick with your original trade plan when you see that you just need to trust in your initial analysis.

Tips for using Edgewonk filters

You can use the filters in the Edgewonk tabs to analyze trade management and its impacts on your performance specifically for different types of trades and thus get a much clearer understanding of your trading behavior.  We’ll now show you what to look for.

The Winner/Loser filter

Filter your trades based on the outcome and so analyze winning and losing trades separately.

You should start filtering only for losing trades and see how your trade management graphs look for these kinds of trades. If the green graph is on top of the red graph, you might have just found a way to improve your performance!

With the Position Size filter you can filter your trades and performance based on certain intervals of position size. Try a few different position size filters. Maybe you make more trade management mistakes when your positions are relatively large and the yellow graph is running much higher for trades with a bigger risk because you are not comfortable with risking too much money?  You should also combine the Position Size filter with other filters to get a clearer picture about your trading behavior and performance.

The Comments filters for entries, exit and trade management can also provide insights about your trading behavior. Especially when you combine the comments filters with other filters such as Setups, the insights can be more meaningful.  You can potentially identify the trades and combinations of setups and specific trade exits where there is still a lot of improvement to be made.

Always keep in mind, when you can identify scenarios where your green graph is on top of your brown graph, all you have to do is simply not to touch your trade again after you have entered it in order to potentially increase your performance.

“It was never my thinking that made the
big money for me, it always was sitting.”
– Jesse Livermore