After reading many of the journals, and if they are honest, most traders seems more likely to wing it on feeling and intuition of a particular buy or sell rather than using a strict automated trading system. This occurs is even more when using technical analysis of chart graphing (support/resistance, pattern/handles). So, should more traders instead imitate program trading whereas trades are executed strictly by pre-programmed indices and automated through a software program? Meaning once a system is in place trades are made according to what has already been accounted for in the program and manual intervention is removed. I am not saying it would result in better performance, because what you program in for assumptions and criteria may be done well or flawed, but at least you'd be able to have more time, instead of sitting behind a monitor all day. You'd be more productive in how you go about trading where you spend more time in research than in actual execution which could be handled by a computer system.
I wrote some words to live by for my trading business. One was "to have the computer work for me and not the other way around". That is leading me to automate. Whatever work I can turn over to the computer I am. First I'm automating my exits because they are the most mechanical part of my trading, at least when I'm trading something with enough liquidity for tech analysis. Will it ever all be automated? I sure as *&^# hope so because that will put me on vacation 24/7/365. Max
whether or not to use automation can be considered a separate question from whether or not a trader should go through the exercise of building an automated system. i believe all should, because it will show up any parts of the "method" that aren't, in fact, systematic. nothing wrong with guessing, but looking around i see an awful lot of people engaged in guessing yet thinking they aren't. to me that's a dangerous way to trade.