Quote from dom993:
- if one defines a pretty rigid trading plan, rigid to the point it could be automated, and then trades it manually, then the results are going to be worse than what the automated system would do ... 2 reasons for this, 1st is without automation, there is no possibility to do enough backtesting to validate every aspect of the system, hence some rules will actually be detrimental, unknown to the trader, 2nd reason is manual execution is inferior to automated execution (from taking a break to judgement errors, through fat fingers & what not)
- to the contrary, if the trading plan is more guidelines than rules, and the trader remains immersed in price action, then he has a lot of room to trade what he sees happening now, and with enough screen time & practice this will work more often than not - but not for an automated system.