Got email today from my execution software saying Broker is Down at 9:30 EST... I seriously thought market hit a circuit-breaker at the open. Connection auto-recovered after 1 minute but still. Was surprised to see SPY not doing anything too crazy and volatility even slightly lower around the open. IB is normally very stable. Maybe a very unusual volume was transacted.. Last time I got disconnects at the open were Feb/March 2020.
So when this happens do you stop everything? I would! I am wondering if running an automated system is as attention-consuming as sitting in front of a sreen all day look at charts.
On most days I only look at 1 thing generated 2 hours after the close. Takes ~30 secs. It is not required, just a good hygiene. When broker or software is down, by the time I will see notification, normally, a pre-defined auto recovery routine kicks in and it is solved. Which happened in this case. In regards to stopping - in my case, there is more danger when my software is NOT running A separate software runs to make sure that never happens. And yet another software runs to monitor the later one. Val
Got you Val. I've been hacking away at my own setup for a while now and I'm aware how all-comsuming it can be... The goal is total automation so you can go away and do what you want and your $ is being put to work, but is it that easy to turn away from it? Having built such an amazing thing totally from scratch, all your own work, it's like an extension of yourself. Or a clone! Is it ever possible to forget about it for long? I'm sure this is the plot of a scifi movie...
Depends how long is long. An yes, this is not easy at all. Generally it helps to have good reasons not to be involved.
Before taking automation any further I always tried to make a business case for it. And unless I had a good idea of how much I will make extra or save vs time spent, in general, I won't do it. Occasionally I failed at that and just did things for fun. Automation has many milestones on a way. Not all of them are worth it for everyone. Depends on crurcuimstances, strategies, profit potential and cost of getting there.
Under 500k is optimal 0.5-2mil ok with some changes >5mil with more changes and increasingly more humble Risk/Return profile