April have been a horrible month! This week of trading coming up to 1st May did not really helped me at all.

In fact, I did what every human would do when they are down this week. They try to fix things when it may not be broken. I was tweaking my settings on my LIVE ACCOUNT.

Gawd dang! This was another cardinal rule of trading that I broke. Auto trading or manual trading this cardinal rule holds true. Do not mess with the strategy half way through. In auto trading terms do not mess with the settings halfway through when your expert advisor is still on…

Sighh… automatic trading is not as easy as it sounds.

Today is Labour Day. So I took a rest, and close down my PC. Reflect on what happened this month in April.

It was terrible, I like many other was not only licking my wounds on a very bad trading month, but I was also looking for a way to recoup my losses. BAD MISTAKE. Experiences traders would say… ‘Turn off your chart and go chill out and don’t mess around with your strategy yet’

I should have done that this week…. but I did not. I was so upset about this month… that I try to focus on other things… Another BAD MISTAKE…

These were the kind of same mistake I made when I started to trade manually many moons ago… I though automatic trading will be the answer to overcoming my BAD MISTAKES and shortcomings I had as a manual trader.

What I should have done was to focus on what I needed to do to correct the way I do things or rather my strategy.

Hmmm…. strategy… Is there such a thing as a strategy when it comes to automatic trading?

I have been to seminars and also bought a lot of trading books. And there are two things that one would need when one were to trade the market. One is a system, and two is a strategy or a game plan.

A system in trading gives you entry and exit points. While a strategy gives you a plan of action intended to accomplish a specific goal. Some people would be confused and mix both these two up when using automatic trading. Well, you can’t blame them, because the plan of action well… some would say the robot has taken care of it.

Leave the computer on 24/7 and let the robot trade in and out the forex market. That is the strategy. How naive one would be if one were to assume that.

No… automatic trading uses a different strategy or a game plan all together. While it should have some similarities with manual trading, it should be applied differently.

During my manual trading time, one thing I really learn about find the holy grail in trading is that first… there is no such things as a holy grail. A lot of people would agree with me on this. No doubt.

Secondly, I learn that the holy grail in trading is actually Money Management. All system works, it’s the how we take control of our money during trading is the key.

Let’s face it, when money is up… we then to be joyful and greedy. We tweak our system to improve further our outcome.

When money is down… we are upset and angry or even fearful, we also tweak our system to help us recoup our losses.

These two things happened to me in both manual trading and also automatic trading.

History has shown, in my case of automatic trading my own personal journal here has shown that I like most humans are very susceptible to emotion of losses and hence do silly things like blow my account which I did on my Masterforex account and also part of my FXDD account.

So then why automatic trading? Why not continue with manual trading and continue to sharpen my own trading skill?

First and foremost for me is TIME. Expert Adviser or Robot trading helps me to find the time to do other things else especially my day job and family.

Secondly is DISCIPLINE. While it does not take the full discipline of trading out of the picture. It does take out the discipline in pulling the trigger to enter and exit a trade. How many of you as a manual trader hesitated when entering and exiting a market.

It’s the fear of losses that stop us from entering the market and it is the greed that stop us from exiting the market. Automatic trading takes that discipline away and that is the only discipline that it takes away.

You still need the discipline to react accordingly after the robot enter and exit the trade/s.

Those with good discipline will succeed whether it is manual or automatic trading.

So now it is that part of my trading that I should now focus on.

I can go on and on searching for the best forex ea around but if I fail to implement it correctly and in a consistent manner I will sure to fail again.

What I do not have is a concrete game plan which I need to follow through and a strategy which I can adapt to situation.

I now have five live account. (I open two more new live account in April) and I am managing about probably 6 EA these five accounts. 4 demo account with probably another 4 EA. On top of that, I also focus on other BS issues. While I believe it is valid to inform the public about such BS on the internet, it does not serve my main objective.

Crazy? Impatient? Stupid? I don’t know.

All I know is that all this happened in April. Before that, life was so EASY, with only 3 main live account and only 3 EA to manage.

So I got to have a game plan to manage my ever growing library of EA. And currently 5 live accounts. Focus on my strategy and if I have the time, write more about the BS that is still going around the internet. The losses this month has taken me back 4 months back. This needs to be address and soon.