Maybe I’m missing something but wouldn’t our fills be way better if we used Autotrade. I’m just thinking that someone has to send the IM then you have to be right there that second and enter it yourself in whatever platform you use and wait for a fill. I would think that that would take 15 to 30 seconds longer that any automaded system. What am I missing? why do people want to wait for the IM and then hope for a good fill after the system operators allready got theirs? BTW I am new at this.
In my case, Autortrader does not work with either of my brokers (Scottrade and XpressTrade). So to use it I would have to move my accounts and abandon the interfaces that I am used to and know well, not to mention the hassle of moving the accounts. I am reluctant to do this without getting more experience with the systems I am subscribed to, and learning if there really is that much better correlation between the C2 tables and trades executed in a real account (I have a 5-10s delay between receiving an ITM signal and getting the trade entered).
Not having to be at the computer continuously might be the greatest advantage of Autotrade, but I haven’t been able to find any posted comparisons between Autotrading a real account vs. manually trading it, using the same system (you’d obviously need two accounts to do this with one person, but perhaps two different people are trading the same system who could help make this comparison?). If a system is only successful with tight limit orders filed within a few seconds of a trade signal, that is cutting it too close for me and my personal ability to keep up with every trade, and to enjoy trading (a factor for me, as crazy as that sounds).
Missed fills on limit orders, regardless of the method of entering the trades, seems to be the biggest cause of differences between the C2 tables and real accounts based on what I have read, and experienced in my short 3 weeks here. If Autotrader results and manual results for the same system over some length of time could be compared, for several systems, and Autotrade wins most of the time, that would certainly be justification to move accounts to a supported broker.
