I agree with Patrick Rooney...that seems like the most sensible approach for most traders who still want to retain some form of discretion while reducing a bit of the emotional/psychological stress of "tick managing" trades. Many of the best entries do occur at those major/minor S/R levels, however the nature of this algo-driven market is to increase the speed of the markets as they ascend/descend into the likely reversal levels...If one is too "micro focussed" and discretionary it might look too high risk, whereas the semi-automation approach will simply enter/exit without that additional mental block.
It's tricky business. One should compare semi-auto results with full-auto results to see if the discretion is "working".....and that the trader's intuition is better than the machine's.
syswizard - I did just what you suggest - and discovered that my discretionary skills are near zero. Made it an easy choice.
Agree that it is tricky. I believe that as the market has become more algo driven, the discretionary aspect has become more muddled. The flows are decidedly one directional on many moves and that runs counter to what many find as normal PA.
I know plenty of traders on both side of the fence here. There are many, many common algos that are used in the market and traders take two approaches to them. Some will build algos to join or counter an algo when they believe they have identified an algo that is running. Other will point and click trade around the algo as they believe they know how the algo will act. There's no way for a trader to be certain of what algo they are trading against but they'll identify patterns which they believe to be algo generated and attempt to profit around that pattern.
Thats intetesting info On the otherhand professional traders see the price action as nagotiation between the speculators and the market. Speculators work with the market sentiments and guide the market in a sensible way to make every day, week, month and year more productive. So there are three categories of traders: 1. Speculators (0.01%) 2. Professional traders(0.1%) 3. Common traders(99.89%) As a professional trader i am thankful to speculators for pulling the market in specific patterns helping me to strategise my trades... and also thank common traders for their gambling attitude