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Automated vs. Manual trading

  • #1
  • First Post: Oct 26, 2016 6:20pm Oct 26, 2016 6:20pm
Hi fellow traders,
i have been trading forex for more than 7 years professionally. When i started i was convinced that no EA can be better than my own intuition. But over the years i learned that most of mistakes i made (you know the feeling when you trade succesfuly for months and then you make some stupid mistake because of undiscipline or greed and it all goes to HELL) originated in myself. I was to much emotionally envolved. It's not a problem when trading for a few hundred $, but when you are trading to pay your bills every month (with account budget over 10k) it's a totally different story. So i realized that it is better to automate your strategy and take out the element of discipline and greed (most destructive elements in trading) with customized EA.

What do you think? Is it better to trade manually or is it better to have your strategy automated?
  • #2
  • Oct 26, 2016 6:35pm Oct 26, 2016 6:35pm
Hi JAckAce,

If you were successful in trading small account, why failed when on a bigger account? The system has nothing to do with this issue, your confidence in yourself and your system is in question. It' not an easy task to figure out and fix what went wrong in 'you' because you are hardwired unknowingly this way for many years. review your setups, and rebuild your confidence in executing your setup would help.

As switching to EA, that would be your last option and i don't recommend it.
If u luv happiness, start w/ discomfort, make friends w/ pain and failure.
100 Hits 0 Miss All Time Return: 35.8%
  • #3
  • Oct 26, 2016 6:55pm Oct 26, 2016 6:55pm
Yes, you are 100% right that my confidence is the issue. But, it is impossible (at least for me) to sit down in fornt of your screen every single day and be totally emotionless and pragmatic. That is why my confidence level is tested with every single trade i take. It's wery easy to lose your cinfidence when sitting behind your monitor and watch a losing trade. It makes you doubt your strategy. That is why i think it is necessary to eliminate your emotions in trading. And the only way possible to do that is automating it.
  • #4
  • Edited 7:23pm Oct 26, 2016 7:11pm | Edited 7:23pm
Quoting JackAce
Yes, you are 100% right that my confidence is the issue. But, it is impossible (at least for me) to sit down in fornt of your screen every single day and be totally emotionless and pragmatic. That is why my confidence level is tested with every single trade i take. It's wery easy to lose your cinfidence when sitting behind your monitor and watch a losing trade. It makes you doubt your strategy. That is why i think it is necessary to eliminate your emotions in trading. And the only way possible to do that is automating it.
Manual trade doesn't have to be emotionless and pragmatic. as the matter of fact, manual trade gives you total control of your position and you learn and be good at adapting the market in any situation. That's something EA would never be able to do.

Trading manually / EA and your personality dealing with the losing positions are completely two different subjects you need to study. Don't get them mixed up.

If you trade, you will eventually encounter losing positions, that's normal, and it's a part of this business. If losing position somehow is making you uncomfortable and your ability to trade properly, you have something else to look at other than the EA.

Not every account is doomed to losing trades and DDs.
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If u luv happiness, start w/ discomfort, make friends w/ pain and failure.
100 Hits 0 Miss All Time Return: 35.8%
  • #5
  • Oct 26, 2016 10:35pm Oct 26, 2016 10:35pm
What's better than facts ? just go here and see how many manual vs automated systems work in the long run.
  • #6
  • Oct 26, 2016 11:15pm Oct 26, 2016 11:15pm
EA's look good when you back test it. Just stick your strategy, you've been trading for more than 7 years now...you should already have a strategy that works for you, just be disciplined
  • #7
  • Oct 27, 2016 1:36am Oct 27, 2016 1:36am
Yes, i have the strategy that works for me. Before i used it trading manually. Now i have it in EA and i must say that trading has become a lot less stressfull
That is my personal experience in comparing manual and automated trading.
  • #8
  • Oct 27, 2016 1:53am Oct 27, 2016 1:53am
IMHO, trading is art, not science. How you can put art into EA ? Not possible.

I tested many EAs in the past. They all have one big problem. They are not able to feel what is happening on the market. Indicators or bars are saying nothing. EAs do not feel the smell of the market.Once the market condintion changed, they usually made loss.

Now I am trading only manually, without any EA and indicators, on black & whitte chart. I am much more profitable and happy than before.

mili
  • #9
  • Oct 27, 2016 2:23am Oct 27, 2016 2:23am
Quoting JackAce
Hi fellow traders, i have been trading forex for more than 7 years professionally. When i started i was convinced that no EA can be better than my own intuition. But over the years i learned that most of mistakes i made (you know the feeling when you trade succesfuly for months and then you make some stupid mistake because of undiscipline or greed and it all goes to HELL) originated in myself. I was to much emotionally envolved. It's not a problem when trading for a few hundred $, but when you are trading to pay your bills every month (with account...
To put it simply EA's dont work they are a useless toy nothing more. Some will work for a short time then need to be reprogrammed to suit new market conditions, just like any manual system.

Personally I find the larger the account size the less stress it gives me. I will quite comfortably and prefer to trade a 200k account over a 2k account anyday. The psychology of making 10% per month on 2k ($200 profit) or 5% on 200k (10k profit) or even to the higher end a 2 million account at 2.5% per month is 50k. The higher your account balance should reduce the risk.

Not sure how much you try to aim for per month, but maybe try reduce your position sizes to build up your confidence
20 Pips a day keeps centerlink away
  • #10
  • Mar 7, 2017 3:36am Mar 7, 2017 3:36am
I'm 100% for automated trading.
But still, not with just some EA that i bought from some developer i don't even know for 50$ online. That is a big NO.
I started with manual trading, but soon found out that i had a good strategy but failed to stick to it because of bad discipline, bad money management, emotions, greed, ....
If you have well defined strategy it should be (and only then) possible to fully automate it. And you must do it on your own, because it is crucial that you know exactly how and why EA is behaving in any given moment. That puts emotions and discipline out of equasion.

Also a big problem with manual trading is backtesting your strategy. It's impossible to backtest for example 10yrs history manually (especially on multiple pairs). And without backtesting (with high quality tick data, not the history in mt4!!!) you're not even aware of your strategy's strenghts and weaknesess (until you confront them).

I see no added value in "human intervention" because it's always emotion biased.
  • #11
  • Apr 7, 2017 8:55am Apr 7, 2017 8:55am
I trade manually but that doesn’t mean, I hate automated trading system! Because, personally I know many pro traders who are making really huge money here by automatic trading! Whatever, I handle my live trading account based on my technical and fundamental trading knowledge, it’s a skilled based trading and I am use to this process of trading! I have different point of view on every single trading instrument!
  • #12
  • Apr 8, 2017 6:42am Apr 8, 2017 6:42am
Best traders according to history, mostly - Manual.
Hedge funds and owners of large portfolios, mostly - Algorithmic.

Pick a side or

Blend the two, go the semi-automatic route.
  • #13
  • Apr 5, 2020 3:36am Apr 5, 2020 3:36am
If you want to run the history again, then it is wise to go for manual trading. But, for me, the combination of both manual and automated trading is profitable for the trader. While running any automated trading bot, I always prefer to analyze the market manually instead of trusting on automated signals.
  • #14
  • Apr 6, 2020 12:38pm Apr 6, 2020 12:38pm
Of course you have to trade on your own, it's a market and you know exactly how difficult and interesting it can be, and you should control every action that will happen to your money. I don't think that you with so much experience can allow any uncontrolled actions.If you are afraid that something will not work out, then it is worth investing more time and energy in your education so that you can get used to the market faster and better and learn to cope with your difficulties. I think that this is what will give you the freedom and opportunity to earn here and now. Do not waste your time on unnecessary passive earning systems, I think you will only experience disappointment because of this decision. But anyway, good luck to you...
  • #15
  • Apr 8, 2020 9:37pm Apr 8, 2020 9:37pm
Every one has a good point. EA has a good thing if you are both a trader and a coder, it will be ok. when used, from other people reselling the EA is not good, I think so.
  • #16
  • Apr 9, 2020 3:28am Apr 9, 2020 3:28am
From my point of view, both are profitable in the long term. Nevertheless, manual trading has much more potential than automatic trading.
Automatic trading has the advantage of being more consistent and stable, but always with limited returns. On the other hand, manual trading maximizes returns because it exploits the full potential of price movements, but its gain curve is more volatile.
I have done both, I started with automatic trading and then went on to manual trading. From my experience, I think it is impossible to match the results of a good intuitive trader by doing automatic trading. A manual trading well done will always take better advantage of price movements than automatic trading, and thus, generate more returns in relation to the risk established.

In short,
If you want consistent and stable returns: automatic trading
If you want to get the most out of the market: manual trading

Note:
Manual trading requires more dedication than automatic trading. If you want to do manual trading well, then you need to study in depth technical analysis and practice hundreds of hours.
Automatic trading requires study as well, but you need to do backtests rather than practicing, however the process is shorter.
  • #17
  • May 4, 2020 6:18am May 4, 2020 6:18am
Automated and Manual trading each have their own advantages. If you both know the price analysis and just know the code, it will take full advantage. also buy EA from other people, most of us are at a loss because we only know depends on the creator's EA, but sometimes do not understand the EA it has entered and exit the command like.
  • #18
  • May 4, 2020 2:54pm May 4, 2020 2:54pm
Quoting JackAce
Hi fellow traders, i have been trading forex for more than 7 years professionally. When i started i was convinced that no EA can be better than my own intuition.

Hey JackAce, we are human beings and we can be affected by tons of external and internal variables! which means out intuition can be biased sometimes and we can't think logically!

A computer is way better than a human when it comes to a systemic approach! and that's why 90% of the market is algo-driven.

If I were you I would go to automate my strategy.
you can always do a simple backtest on tradingview where you can use it to visualize your strategy better than mt4, once you are there and ready you can go for the mt4/5 or even connect TV to your mt4 (there are many bots that can help you do that)
Long live Bitcoin
  • #19
  • May 4, 2020 5:00pm May 4, 2020 5:00pm
Still feel arause .... when pull the trigger .. bebe come to daddyy .....
  • #20
  • Last Post: May 17, 2020 10:02am May 17, 2020 10:02am
While Automated trading can remove human emotions from the trading that make a person open positions that they shouldn't have, we must also remember that the primary issue with EA is mechanical failure. Discrepancies have known to occur between orders highlighted by a person's trading indicators and those sent from the platform to the market in real time mainly due to connectivity issue etc. No system, however sophisticated, is infallible.
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