Quote from easyguru:
Why don't you put some money in mechanical futures trading through a system broker. You can trade a long term system like Turtle or Aberration this way.
I have looked into stuff like Turtle trading, Aberration and I-Master...
None of them coincide with with personality make-up... I am basically an intraday systematic discretionary trader (with some limited longer term stuff), and not a hardcore systems trader who is at the complete mercy of computer signals... I know that many say that a trader's evolution will eventually take him to systems trading, but I can't see that happening to me... additionally, such systems have been developed and backtested using daily data, but I am an intraday trader by mentality... even if I somehow mustered up the courage to move 100% to the daily timeframe, I would have issues with systems trading because of the lack of control...
Now follows some specific comments on various systems...
Regards turtle trading, I do not have the intestinal fortitude to give back a large part or all of my gains on a given trade... this is a prerequisite for the turtle approach...
On Aberration, it has a prerequisite to participate in a large, well diversified portfolio... this is most definitely not my style...
I have spoken with a few people about I-Master and I gather that it is a volatility breakout system... I also recall seeing some example charts of I-Master entry points and, without the algorithm, it was fairly obvious that volatility breakout principles were being used... as a new system devised by the guys who developed Aberration, it has become very popular very quickly amongst the systems trading community, as a result of some pretty decent near term performance... given the fact that there is no requirement to trade multiple markets on I-Master, I will reserve judgement on it for a while... but again, there is the issue of "can I twist my personality to trade the daily timeframe -- while still of course continuing to trade intraday for my consistent gains -- and can I submit to black-box decision-making?"...
But I do wholeheartedly accept your underlying premise that, because there is no effort involved in systems trading (apart from the effort of agreeing to accept a computer's signals) and because decisions are made on a daily basis (not very time-consuming, or even not at all time-consuming if funds are managed on my behalf by a systems broker), systems trading has potential for the effortless utilization of excess funds and could be possibly used alongside income-generative discretionary daytrading...