I can understand your reluctance to consider automated trading. It is a huge level beyond manual trading and can be pretty overwhelming.
Personally, I can remember my nervousness when I first began manual electronic daytrading with Castle Securities, knowing that each mouse click would buy/sell $100k+ of stock! Actually, on my first trade, I accidently clicked the wrong button and prematurely sold $130k of MSFT stock.
Just as with anything else, your comfort increases with experience. In fact after using the automated trading platform internally for the past two months, I feel much more comfortable with automated trading than manual trading. I even find the time to casually visit the restroom while using the automatically daytrading using this platform => knowing that the platform is executing orders precisely as I know it will. It is actually quite reassuring, once you see it work day-after-day.
You mentioned that you "make a great many mistakes" in your trading, as we all do. How many of these mistakes were caused by not following your plan? An automated system would always follow your plan. If you noticed a repeating weakness in your trading strategy, you could simply make a change to your mechanical trading plan and be assured that you would never fall into that same trap again.
I would anticipate new users to be somewhat nervous, initially. That is why they might begin by allowing only a single trade to be executed, or paper trade for a while. As their confidence builds, their trading would increase.
I think that the big money is made by the "trail blazers". Early SOES traders made a fortune, but today, their are few successful traders who rely on the SOES system. I expect that the speed and consistency of automated trading will give people the advantages and profitability that SOES trading provided people 5-10 years ago. By the time that automated trading is accessible and common for all traders, it will likely be much more difficult to make money.
Just my opinion. Only history will tell for sure...
Happy Trading and Good Luck!
-Eric |
