Quote from Allistah:
I work full time. I have the ability to code strategies. I don't have any experience with actually trading automated strategies live nor do I have the experience with the proper testing to get to that point. I get back and forward testing and am now working with Tradestations tools which allow me to do that. It's one of those things that you don't know if you've got it right if you've never seen it before types of things I guess. So I'm just wanting to hear from people that are using automated trading with live money and how they're doing their back and forward testing to assume them it will work when going live. I guess thats it in a nutshell.
Ok, here's the thing: I started about a 1.5 years ago - I also have a full-time job as consultant but I've nevertheless been sitting up until 5am dozens and dozens of nights to move things forward. Now I've set up a company and return 300% in one year (you can read my journal in another thread). If I can dot, anyone can.
My first advice. Leave Tradestation behind. The indicators don't work that well anymore (there was a good post about this last week on ET). Move over to a "real" programming language like C, VB, R, Matlab, whatever, but make sure you can control every nook and cranny as it's pivotal that you understand all the mechanics behind.
Download historical data for whatever security you are trading. Yahoo will do if you don't trade intraday. Then back test your strategy on that data. Once that works, move on and forward test on out-of-sample data (you still use historical data). Once that works, do forward testing with paper trading. Once you know that works as well, go live with real money.
How to do all the nitty-gritty things is for you to find out - there are tons of books and source code libraries out there to dive into. You have to do the hard work, nobody will ever do that for you unless you shell out a few hundred grand.
Finally: Don't study as much as you can - ALWAYS study!