Quote from Rabbitone:
I have come to the conclusion - automated trading does work reliably and profitably in the long run.
Amen.
Way more then 1/2 of all trades in the markets are not done automatically. Those that aren't are done by rooms full of kids at bingo tables watching for limit orders and hitting F8 and F9 all day to make a living. Oh yes, they have their Bloomberg feeds on TVs on the wall, but that isn't what makes money.
I look at it simply. If you need skills to beat a computer in order to play the game-even to belly up to the table-then you'd better bring the goods, or go home. Without an autotrader, you are literally the new poker player sitting down at the table of pros, all of which are sending signals to each other. You are not just playing each player at the table-you are playing the ENTIRE table. And guess what... Everyone at the table is trading with a computer-except you.
Watching one stock, eyes glued to the screen 6-1/2 hours/day, might make you money. But doesn't hedging your bet(s) make more sense? If you could scan 10s of thousands of stocks each day for the conditions that put them on the short list, then watch those 80 or so like a hawk until the right conditions in volume, price, and hundreds of other conditions were met, you would be a computer. No human can do that, and certainly not repeatably and reliably.
That is what computers are supposed to do. They do what we can do, but in quantity and with higher accuracy. Plus be honest here-who wants to actually sit in front of a monitor and stress over making money when a computer will do it for you and tell you how much in email to the golf course, or in a report when you get home.
I'll wager (as do we all) that there is no way to lose money in autotrading if you have entered in at _least_ a conservative winning strategy for the computer to execute. When the conditions aren't right, you hold. When they are, you buy. Simple.
So tell me... After all these years, and all these studies, etc. why don't you share with the class what strategies you were using that lost you money? I'd be happy to tell you why they lost, as I'm sure would everyone else here. You threw down the gauntlet, so I for one take up your challenge.
Put up!
