What is the difference between semi-automated and fully-automated trade management?
Fully automated trade management is based on the following principles:
- the system suggests a setup;
- the system places this on the market;
- the system manages the trade.
Semi automated trade management is based on the following principles:
- the system suggests a setup;
- the trader decides whether to accept these suggestions or not;
- the system manages the trade.
Before submitting a trade, you should ask yourself the following questions:
- Does the market provide sufficient entry criteria for placing a trade?
- Can the criteria be replicated?
- What is the current trend on the market? Does the signal support the trend or is opposite to it?
- What is the overall market trend (index)? Does the signal support the overall market trend or not?
- At which price level should I place an entry?
- What is the acceptable level of risk for the trade?
- At which price level should I place a stop?
- Which currency should the instrument be traded in?
- Which currency is my account held in?
- What is the currency conversion for the risk?
- What is the current price of currency pairs for the instrument/risk calculation?
- What spread does the instrument have?
- What average slippage does the instrument have?
- Taking all of these factors into consideration, how large should the order size be?
- Is the calculated order size even or odd? (Odd lots can lead to disadvantageous price setting by the market maker and bad execution)
- Is the order size already extensive?
- Is it better to scale in a position? If yes, then how?
- Which order type should be used in the market (market, limit, stop, stop limit)?
- How can currently running trades be secured (trailing stops)?
- Where should the targets be placed in order to reach a positive ratio of chances to risks?
- How will I scale out of the position (1 to targets)?
- By what order size proportion will the positions be reduced when scaling out?
- What is the impact on the trading account?
- How many long/short positions are going to be held?
- What will be my actions in the case of a crash? Are my positions market-neutral?
These are just some questions that should be answered by the trader, especially when dealing will smaller time frames such as 1 minute or 5 minutes. When using full automatism, this is no longer necessary because the system performs all trades automatically.
Nevertheless, the human perspective has many advantages over automation. For example, many complex patterns/confluences can be better perceived visually and therefore more clearly interpreted.
Semi-automatism will allow you to combine the best of both worlds.