Having an edge means you are better / earlier / superior than your competitors / other traders because you know something , some info , some tricks they don't know. You don't need an edge. You just need to be better then your previous self.
Coolest thing from Trading in the Zone (I think) was the exercise where you are to make random entries and money manage your way to a profit.
I have spent last eight years studying, back testing hedging and other ideas of trading, hedging can be done using futures like Indexes if hedging stocks, or options. Without going in depth responses cause I simply don't want to share what I have learned, there is much to doing it in different ways, plus keeping drawdowns very low. Whereas not hedging, you will encounter drawdowns that will have to be made up to just get to even on your account. If you have 15 losing trades in a row and use 2% risk, you are going to have to make approx. 30% to bring account back to 0% on the year. Whereas with hedging, doing exact same trades, can be positive for the year, take loss on the underlying and keeping the long Puts longer till entire loss recovered and then some. So instead of having 30% drawdown, with hedges much less and therefore can beat the "averages" with smaller gains than the not hedged 30% drawdown. Much depends on profitable percentages and R to R.