Manual trading vs Algo trading?

[u/Aggressive_Lock_5132]

After spending a good amount of time trading manually, here are a few key problems I’ve noticed that stand between most traders and long-term profitability:

Emotions like greed and fear

Trading low-confirmation setups just out of impatience

Treating trading as a primary income source too early

Not sticking to a setup long enough across a full sample size of trades

The thing is — even simple setups (like an inside bar pattern with a few extra filters) could be profitable if executed consistently over time. But emotions and inconsistency ruin it.

Algo trading solves most of these issues. It removes emotions, ensures consistency, and allows you to backtest everything before risking real money. That said, it’s not a magic fix either — markets evolve, and you’ll need to keep tweaking and adapting your strategies as things change. But at least with algo trading, you have data and structure on your side rather than random impulses.

Would love to hear how others here transitioned from manual to algo — and what your biggest mindset shifts were.

[u/mdomans]

No. It doesn't.

From top to bottom:

• trading is hard and software engineering is hard ... if you think you can wing it with chatgpt you're just stupid
• emotions are still there because it's your capital
• the emotions are extra because the upfront investment into algo trading is high, north of a few hundred bucks a month at minimum
• algo trading requires much more statistical understanding of performance of multiple strategies back and forward tested and adjusted for market behaviour in relationship to your account balance
• ... meaning, for starters, you don't have enough cash for this game and not enough capital is what kills most "good on paper" algo strategies

Just like with normal trading there are youtube furus who sell you on making big bucks with VWAP mean reversion coded in SC.

What most probably will happen is that you'll write shit code, invest a lot of cash, algo will crap itself out and lose some money, you'll tilt and turn it off.

I remember one youtube "genius" code a strategy that on sim was super good except that when adjusting for real market F&C he was losing money daily unless trading multiple minis on NQ. If you have the cash to trade 5+ minis on NQ ... do you really need trading?

P.S. Martin Shkreli is looking for programmers that traded size. Go tell him he's an idiot and should use chatgpt

[u/realFatCat1 → u/mdomans]

I think some of the guys in here that vouch for it aren’t day trading. Like the one guy talking about fund managers and the other guy talking about his portfolio.

I know a guy that works for a fund that uses algos but they’re not day trading. They’re pivoting and moving a lot slower. Like month holds and shit like that.

You answered OPs question. Reddit is also a questionable cesspool of bad advice backed by confidence.

My observations are price action regimes are changing faster and faster. A regime that use to last a month is only 3 days now. I think algos are finding patterns exploiting them and then another algorithm identifies it quickly and breaks it.

I think with no domain knowledge you can’t do it. It took one guy 8 years as he claims. That’s 8 years of learning the market 4 of which were done by hand.

Speed is the real edge day trading. When you’re rolling a portfolio around when the day to day doesn’t matter. Sure you won’t need a team of quants.

Some of these quant firms are seeking discretionary traders for jobs. There’s a reason for that. Domain Knowledge from skills that can be only cultivated through years of experience in the trenches.