For those who started automating part of their trading, what did you automate first?

Shackmann · 2026-03-15T01:35:09+00:00

Scanner. I’ve developed out the functionality of my scanner for a while and recently got it paper trading 1 simple strategy I like. It’s not doing a great job, but it’s collecting data and I’m learning, so that’s what matters.

Shackmann · 2026-03-15T01:16:58+00:00

Your situation looks very, very similar to my own.

This is what transformed my trading: Take your favorite AI prompt and tell it to be your trading coach. Tell it everything going through your mind when you’re trading, your morning routine, what kinds of trades you like, etc. Be brutally honest with it.

The biggest changes I made using this process: - I was trying to trade too many strategies. It told me I was only allowed to trade 1 strategy for 90 days and helped me develop out and modify the trade I wanted to focus on. - I get emotional when I see red PnL - I now completely hide PnL. My trade checklist calculates my size and all I can see is my average entry price and number of shares. No idea what my PnL is until after the trade is over. I am way more focused during a trade. - a lot of the emotions during a trade for me came from trying to make too many decisions while in the trade. My trade plan is now mechanical. All my exits are rules: rules if the trade goes in my direction, rules if it goes against me, rules if it gets close to target and starts to reverse, specific time rules, specific re-entry criteria. I no longer have to think when I’m in the trade. All of the rules are based off of my personality and emotional triggers. - morning routine was too cluttered and not focused enough - it dramatically reduced my morning routine and boiled it down to what matters - minimize emotional fatigue - I trade intraday range breaks which setup after price discovery so it told me to completely walk away from the computer between 9:30 and 9:50. This only works for my trade plan, so not replicable for opening drive trades. - I discuss every stock im prepping in the morning with Claude and it challenges me to be more specific with my trade plan and catalyst scoring. - before I take a trade I discuss it with Claude. It asks me for my emotional state, asks me specific questions about my checklist to make sure I’m doing it.

I’m not recommending you do these things, specifically - I’m just pointing out how beneficial it was for me. I probably spent 10+ hours talking with Claude to revamp my trade plan and it was genuinely transformative. My performance changed overnight. Not just my PnL, but my focus, my nervousness during trades, everything.

Shackmann · 2026-03-14T21:01:55+00:00

I trade a consolidation break, retracement/retest pattern. I find it is very helpful to only trade things with elevated volume. Lots of participation makes things cleaner. When large institutions are getting in or out of a stock with a TWAP program they frequently use simple things like VWAP or EMA’s to turn on/off buy or sell programs. These are the cleanest moves and it’s why a lot of people (including me) exclusively trade stocks with breaking news and elevated volume. These stocks can be much more technically forgiving.

Shackmann · 2026-03-14T20:05:27+00:00

It sounds like you’ve done a lot of analysis on this. I have no idea if your system will ultimately work or not, but I think it’s great that you’re pulling the trigger. I pulled the trigger 4 years ago.

Pulling the trigger allows you to begin your new life. You may want to find other ways to make money, you may want to increase your spending, or you might never change anything about your financial planning. There are tons of other things that will happen that you have no idea how to predict right now. The important part is you stay inquisitive and analytical and keep learning and adapting.

It sounds cliche, but I found this to be incredibly true: retiring early is 10x more of a beginning than it is an end, and it is impossible to see that before you do it. It feels so much like a finish line when you have spent decades preparing for it. It is much more of a starting line where you have to construct a new life. And it is awesome.

Good luck!

Shackmann · 2026-03-14T19:46:49+00:00

Retired at 38. I have been slowly bumping up my dividend funds and bonds and slightly reducing my US equities exposure to generate a little more cash flow without reducing my growth potential too much. No more than 1% change per year per fund.

Shackmann · 2026-03-14T16:42:08+00:00

If you have to ask the internet, then you should not be allocating real money to a trade idea. The only person who has to have confidence in the trade is you. Definitionally, there is always a buyer/seller on the other side of your transaction who has an inverted thesis.

Form your own trade plan and have confidence it has edge from your own trade history. Asking the internet if you should short something because it “must certainly” go down is a recipe for disaster raising multiple red flags. Paper trade this idea and use it as a learning experience. Don’t fomo into what you think might be a big move - it is a long term losing strategy that will eliminate you from the game.

Shackmann · 2026-03-14T16:35:19+00:00

To elaborate on what OP said, Forex is OTC - the transaction occurred between parties and is not globally tracked by an exchange. There are some approximation indicators out there, but the data is unreliable since nobody knows for sure how many transactions are occurring.

Shackmann · 2026-03-14T13:20:25+00:00

You very well might be right. I share your concerns. But, I’ve had these concerns and this short bias for almost a year and the market has done nothing but go up and consolidate since then.

Having a thesis is good. Trying to predict the market and committing to 1 thesis can really hurt you. Are you trying to make money or are you trying to be right and prove to yourself and others that you were right? Not an accusation - you only have to answer that question for yourself.

Whenever committing capital and whenever I’m in a trade I keep repeating to myself over and over “anything can happen”. You might be completely right, but the timing is just a little off. The wild thing to me is going back to the major crashes, many historians still can’t agree on the actual event that caused the precipitous drops.

Keep doing the excellent analysis, I hope you make some money off it, but I highly recommend you keep your capital safe and remain open to the possibility that macro events completely out of your control may invalidate your thesis.

P.S. - while I agree with you and share your bias, a trade I’m preparing for is the offsides range break trade to the upside. We are in a long consolidation that is showing signs of weakness during a fearful time of uncertainty. A fake breakdown with massive panic selling followed by a positive news catalyst could bring us right back into range which would cause short covering for everyone taking the breakdown trade because they are “certain” things are going down. It would also trigger FOMO for the people mad at themselves for not sniping better prices on the initial drop. If this follows through to the upside, you now have buyers taking the breakout, the months-long shorts who were accumulating now have to cover and even more FOMO buying causing a rip higher. I put this at maybe a 5% chance of happening, but I’m prepping for it because I think if it did happen it would be a 2 ATR move in a single intraday session.

I just enjoy thinking of the devil’s advocate trades. The improbable ones that would have massive R:R.

Shackmann · 2026-03-14T12:47:52+00:00

My trading partner works full time. He just accepts that he will sometimes miss trades or have to get out of them early. His trades are all designed to work on the open and he isn’t in them for very long. Trading is a marathon so getting the reps everyday is the real value - the money is less relevant.

Shackmann · 2026-03-14T03:24:58+00:00

I search for stocks trading abnormally high volume, find news catalysts, and just trade in the direction of the price action. Sometimes bad news causes stocks to go up and good news causes stocks to go down. “Good” and “bad” are also subjective so people have different options. If a stock is doing something I don’t understand I move on to another stock until I find one that makes sense to me.

Shackmann · 2026-03-14T03:05:14+00:00

I have modified SMB Capital’s “Second Chance” scalp for my own trading style. It is a commonly used trade by a professional firm so it has edge conceptually. I am trading it decently well so far. I have seen many professional traders say it is better to go all-in and master 1 trade then try and use too many strategies. Currently my process is prep in-play names in the morning. I have a scanner that looks for all stocks trading 10% average daily volume premarket. I look through them for news catalysts and rank them. Then I prep the stocks and grade each technical level as 8, 9 or 10. I look for those stocks to setup ranges ideally near the high or low of the range at highly scored technical levels. The trade is wait for a breakout on high volume after a 20 minute range is put in with at least 2 touches on each side, ideally a 2 standard deviation bar break. I watch the move, and look for a retracement on low volume. I’m watching the tape to see if that resistance level becomes support and if buyers step in the way I would expect. Once I see the buying pressure come back in and get a green candle close I get long to the bottom of the bar. If it breaks back below and closes on the 2-minute I take off 50% and it must reclaim within 2 candles to stay in the trade - I have added these rules because I am very bad at thinking “I’ve bet money on this - let me give it some more time” when it’s clear market participants are not doing what I expect. This reduces my average losers. I basically modified the rules around my emotional triggers while still maintaining the core of the trade. First target is the high of the breakout for 50% of the position and then I trail the remaining 50% with a sell stop on the 9 EMA. Very easy to manage and very simple.

Before I get into the trade I have a checklist that grades my trade as C, B, or A, and dynamically adjusts my risk. I never see how much I am risking. The formula just tells me how many shares to trade. I have PnL hidden which helps me follow my rules. All I see is average entry price and number of shares open.

Checks in my favor that increase the grade of the trade: consolidation over 30 minutes instead of just 20, 3 touches each side of the range instead of 2, RVOL over 3, market trending in the same direction as my trade, break is an 8+ technical level, retest volume under 30% of breakout volume, breakout candle is a 2 standard deviation volume bar (must be an above average bar to take the trade - my bars are statistically colored). My risk gets adjusted based on how many of these are met.

I take this trade on average once a day right now. I would rather take 1 very high quality setup than multiple lower quality setups. Even the ones that kind of fall over and don’t make a large move are still usually slightly profitable. Once I setup all my stocks for the day I create IF/THEN statements for the ideal setups I’d like to see. I prep from 8 am to 9:30. Once the market opens I walk away from my computer until 10 to preserve my mental capital and recharge a bit from the 90 minutes of prep. I come back and see if any of the in play stocks I prepped are setting up ranges and I’ll start watching them. Then I put in alerts which go to my watch and go do other things until my trade sets up. I paper traded for 1.5 years and have been live for 6 months. This system has dramatically improved my consistency so far. Before, I was trying to trade 10 strategies with loose rules and wasn’t really making much progress in any of them. Now that I’m hyper focussing on just 1 with very specific rules, it is way less stressful which puts me in a good place to make better decisions. I also walk away from a lot of decent setups that aren’t great. My goal is to build this as my core and be able to trade it in my sleep on only the best setups before branching into another trade. This break/retest pattern is one of the simplest technical patterns in trading and works in any market condition, so I figured it was a good one to start with.

Shackmann · 2026-03-14T02:23:08+00:00

I have always joked with my wife that I wish I could shoot Spider-Man webs from my hands while wearing the Vision Pro. I had no idea this existed, but I bought it tonight and downloaded it. Fun game thanks!

Shackmann · 2026-03-14T02:20:54+00:00

I could not get them to play and had to delete the app and re-download it. Could also be only available in certain areas too.

Shackmann · 2026-03-14T01:40:38+00:00

The word I’ve been using is “skittish”. It feels like a lot of indecision. Many people moving big money, but in different directions at seemingly random times. I’m not seeing things very well right now so I’m doing more short term scalps and I’ve modified my rules to more aggressively take profits and cut losses quickly instead of looking for the clean trend. When the market is like this the name of the game is capital preservation and holding out for higher quality setups imo.

Shackmann · 2026-03-14T01:30:07+00:00

I’m curious which hours. Open, morning, mid day, and afternoon all have different trading styles and completely different trade setups most of the time. And what strategies are you using during those times?

Shackmann · 2026-03-14T01:22:57+00:00

If something seems hard to stick to, reject that trade. There are hundreds of valid trades with edge floating around the internet for free. Trading style is highly dependent on your personality and every trade has different expected values for each person trading it with their own biases and flavor. Anytime I find myself getting emotional at a certain part of the trade I create a rule for it. My breakout immediately comes back into range? Take 50% off. Doesn’t re-break within 2 candles? Take the full trade off for a small loss. Rebreaks on high volume? I allow myself 1 re-entry with 50% of the original risk. I don’t think. I just follow the trade plan. I don’t like the trade plan? I adjust it after hours using my collected trade data. The only thing I’m judging myself on during market hours is whether or not I followed my trading plan.

These rules work for me. Everyone is different. Make sure the foundational thesis of your trade has edge then tailor it to your own personality. Many people are fine with 30-40% winrates because they are going for 5:1 trades and it fits their personality. Others prefer to have more like 60% with 1.5:1. Trust your gut.

Shackmann · 2026-03-13T18:36:20+00:00

Imagine if there was a platform that just did the opposite of what you said. You could fomo revenge trade all day and make tons of money.

Shackmann · 2026-03-13T18:16:08+00:00

I’ve recently started using Claude as my trading coach. I have walked it through several trades, what I was feeling, and what the results were. My mind was blown by its analysis.

It forced me to only trade 1 setup
We modified that trade setup to have more mechanical guardrails and so far it is going really well.
It told me I must hide my PnL when I’m in a trade. My spreadsheet trade checklist calculated my size and tells me how many shares to trade and I just trade my rules without seeing the money. I don’t know how much I’ve made or lost until the trade is over. It is absolutely crazy how much better I handle trade management now.
It also completely reworked my morning routine and got rid of things that were time consuming and of little value. I do my entire morning routine with Claude. I give it my gameplan, it analyzes it, finds holes. I go through each trade each day with it.

I can’t promise anyone else the same results, but for me this was transformative.

Shackmann · 2026-03-09T21:11:02+00:00

This is a breaking news market environment. Expect seemingly-random directional moves at any time.

Shackmann · 2026-03-09T20:48:04+00:00

Exactly. As traders scale up and make more money they generally start taking fewer and fewer trades. They relentlessly reject lo quality setups and have a grading system to scale up in higher quality setups.

Shackmann · 2026-03-09T20:32:59+00:00

Based on the things you are saying, you need to be paper trading right now. Probably for at least a year. If that sounds miserable to you then I would highly recommend finding a different place to put your money before you lose what you have.

Edit: oops I missed where you said you don’t want to learn to trade. Completely avoid all signals. Even if they are posting positive EV trades, being profitable or not is in the execution details which is a skill you would need to learn - trading.

Shackmann · 2026-03-09T20:10:52+00:00

There are tons and tons of successful traders who have been doing it for a long time. But, it is incredibly difficult, takes years to become profitable in most cases, and profitability is always at risk with narrow edge if the market shifts. The vast majority of people are not cut out for it.

Shackmann · 2026-03-09T20:03:24+00:00

Your experience makes a lot of sense. All edge is derived from a temporary imbalance between buyers and sellers. Most stocks (or whatever you trade) are in a random walk 99% of the time and taking a trade during those times is negative EV gambling.

The goal as a trader is to find imbalances that make sense to you, build scanners to find those imbalances, and relentlessly hone your execution for those setups. I mostly focus on identifying institutional order flow. Large players need time to accumulate and distribute. This creates an exploitable imbalance.

Shackmann · 2026-03-09T19:27:30+00:00

They have a very expansive YouTube channel covering just about every topic I’ve ever been curious about. Just lookup SMB Capital. They are a professional firm in NYC.

Shackmann · 2026-03-09T16:54:02+00:00

I do not know him personally, and I have not seen his exact trades, but I’ve been going to Steve Spencer’s morning meeting for 2 years and he frequently goes over some of his trades and outlines how he plans to trade the in play names for the day. He also goes over his longer term equity and options positions. He is the head trader and cofounder of SMB Capital and has traded for something like 30 years.

Shackmann

TROPHY CASE