Been manually trading for months and honestly getting burned out watching charts all day.
Thinking about switching to automated systems but there’s so many options out there. Some look legit, others seem like total scams.
What platforms have you actually used that work?
MT4 works fine if you keep it simple.
Skip the fancy platforms - use what brokers actually support well. Most automated trading fails because people overcomplicate things, not because they picked the wrong platform. Make sure your manual strategy’s profitable first. If you can’t make money watching charts, automation won’t magically fix that. Test any automated version against your manual results for at least 3 months before going live. When you’re running automated strategies, broker execution speed beats platform features every time.
TradingView’s got some basic automation that works for simple strategies.
MT4 with custom EAs beats paid platforms.
I’ve tried a bunch of different approaches over the years.
Started with those expensive monthly services promising insane returns - total waste of money.
MT5 became my main platform. Built basic EAs with the MQL5 wizard, then learned to code more complex ones. The backtesting shows how strategies would’ve performed historically.
Tested cTrader too. Their cBots are solid and the platform feels more modern than MT4/5, but the EA marketplace is way smaller.
Biggest lesson - no system just prints money while you sleep. Even good automated strategies need babysitting and tweaks when markets shift.
Start simple. Maybe automate pieces of your current manual strategy instead of jumping into something completely different.
I went with NinjaTrader for automated trading after trying a bunch of different platforms. The strategy builder’s pretty easy to use once you get past the learning curve.
Don’t automate anything until you’ve got a strategy that works manually. I spent months paper trading mine before going live.
Start small when you automate - even strategies that work great can do weird stuff in real markets.