![\"sell](\"https:\/\/www.brookstradingcourse.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/sell-buy-trading-software-cartoon-300x214.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nI think traders using automated trading are going to lose. My experience is I spent – I don\u2019t know – more than 10,000 hours testing all kinds of trading ideas, and I spent a whole bunch of time trying automated trading, and for me, I kept seeing exceptions to every rule. So I\u2019d write systems, and as I\u2019m getting triggered into a trade, I\u2019m looking at it and I\u2019m saying, \u201cWait a minute, that bear bar is bigger than I think it should be. I should not buy here.\u201d Or the signal bar – although it\u2019s a signal bar, it\u2019s small relative to the past three bear bars. So I kept overriding the system and I ended up concluding that my personality is not good for automated trading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Also, in my gut, I felt that if it was that simple, Goldman Sachs would already be doing it, or they would be doing the opposite, and I think it would be really hard to make money doing it. I don\u2019t know of anyone who\u2019s made money long term, doing automated trading. Unless you\u2019re a high frequency trading firm or a hedge fund and really are extremely good with the math, I personally would not do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It sounds good and TradeStation makes it sound like it\u2019s possible, but the reality is I think it\u2019s really, really difficult to do it. The market is like melted plastic, so any pattern that you have, you have to be able to deform it in your mind and stretch it to extremes beyond which you thought were likely. And any back-testing that you do with automated trading, is limited because they\u2019re sample errors. The market behaves differently at different times, and I\u2019ve mentioned many times before, the high-frequency trading firms, most of the algorithms they use, they just use for a few days, maybe a week, and then they change because the market changes. And if you do automated trading, and you do testing, and you find something that looks like it works, it works in that time period. And if you look carefully at your system, you may discover that there was one huge win, and if you take that huge win out, the system loses money. Or there might be two huge wins out of 15 trades, and if you take those out, you lose money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And the message there is, if you take the trade – if you\u2019re doing it automated and you do not trade today and you go back tomorrow to automated trading, and today was that one big win that you needed, then your system is left with all the losers and you end up losing. So I don\u2019t have time or energy to talk about it, but I think the solution is to really work on your emotions and not on automated trading – and it\u2019s hard, and it\u2019s hard for all of us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They’re out to get me<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
I remember I used to get so upset. I used to take things personally. \u201cThey\u2019re out to get me. I\u2019m just not good enough. I don\u2019t deserve it. I\u2019m not loveable.\u201d Anything you can imagine. And eventually, I just got past my emotions and I came to accept – strongly accept – that nobody cares; nobody knows I exist; nobody cares if I exist; nobody\u2019s trying to take my money; I don\u2019t have enough money for them to take, and I\u2019m just out here trading just like they are. I\u2019m doing it on a much smaller scale than Goldman Sachs, but I\u2019m doing what they\u2019re doing. And if I\u2019m objective and I do things as well, and I don\u2019t make mistakes, I can make money. And I can make money long term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s all on me. Eat what you kill. Everyone wants a protector; a God, a mentor or someone to guarantee that they will not lose money. That\u2019s not the way the world works – especially the trading world. There\u2019s no one there to watch out for you and you have to do it on your own, and it takes a long time to get to that point, but you can do it, right? But, it\u2019s nice to think an automated trading system will protect you from yourself, but I think you\u2019ll lose money. I think the answer is, to just be patient, take months or years to work on yourself, trade very small, and go in with low expectations. And then once you\u2019re consistently profitable work on increasing your size.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Al Brooks<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nInformation on Al’s Online day trading room<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BPA trading room Q&A: May 6, 2015 I\u2019m sure that you looked at automated trading in your long experience. What are your thoughts on automated trading for small volume retail traders, especially for those who cannot usually control emotions?Audio duration: 3min 55sec Audio transcript Sell! Sell Now! No! No! Buy! Buy! Sell! I think traders […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[159],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-39881","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ask-al","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail","9":"override"},"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"BTC Admin","author_link":"https:\/\/www.brookstradingcourse.com\/es\/author\/richardhk\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brookstradingcourse.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brookstradingcourse.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brookstradingcourse.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brookstradingcourse.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brookstradingcourse.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.brookstradingcourse.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39881\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brookstradingcourse.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brookstradingcourse.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brookstradingcourse.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}