The latest version of TradeStation, TradeStation 6 is designed to fully automate the placement of all equity trades based on your own custom strategies, without having to use any additional outside software. This is one of the significant features added to TradeStation in its most recent upgrade.
When set for strategy automation, TradeStation 6 monitors the markets based on the rules of your custom strategies. When the conditions have been met and itâs time to place a buy or sell order, TradeStation pops up a dialog asking you to confirm that you want to place the trade. By clicking the confirmation button your order is automatically sent to the marketplace using intelligent direct-access order routing. You can also click âCustomize Orderâ to modify any attribute of the order (ex: enable some of the advanced order features) or click âIgnoreâ to not place the order.
To enable strategy automation, open a chart that has a trading strategy applied and choose Format Strategies from the main menu. A dialog will appear that has to check boxes at the bottom of the window. One says 'Automate strategies for display in Account Manager Strategy Automation tab', which you will need to check on. The other check box says 'Automate equities execution using account # _________ with confirmation ON', which you will also need to check on.
If you wish you can turn off the optional confirmation dialog (which is no by default) and literally sit back and watch it trade. Simply change the confirmation to OFF from ON (the default) in this dialog.
The ability to turn off the confirmation is especially beneficial to very active traders who are monitoring several strategies/symbols simultaneously and don't want to delay their orders by the time it takes to click on the confirmation button. However, if you do select this method of trading, you will be asked (over and over again!) to agree to the disclaimers stating that TradeStation Securities will not be held liable. Just as you may purchase an automobile with 'cruise control', it is still imperative you be in the car and paying attention when you are taking advantage of this feature. Same applies here!