Why?

Why in the world would a successful mechanical trader try a discretionary approach?

Throughout my 20+ years of trading part time, and now full time, I have had much more success with mechanical systems than discretionary ones.  Hopefully that is pretty obvious to anyone who has read my bio.  Winning 3 World Cup Trading trophies, all with mechanical systems, should convince you of my ability to create successful mechanical systems.  I guess at heart I am just a numbers guy, and creating rigid rules appeals to me most.

But, there are things about mechanical systems I just hate:

First, once you turn a mechanical system on, you basically lose all control.  And since most of my systems run for days or weeks, the day to day variation sometimes gets emotionally overwhelming.  I resist the temptation to interfere, but it is always there.

Second, in the back of my mind I always wonder if/when a mechanical system will stop working.

Third, sometimes mechanical systems take trades that make me think "what did the strategy just do?!?"  Many times - but not always - these trades turn out to be losers.

Finally, I've always had limited success in creating a day trading system with mechanical rules.  Maybe it is the way I test, maybe it is the market, but since my goal is a day trading system, I need to look beyond mechanical type systems.

There is definitely a challenge here that motivates me: "Can I become a great discretionary trader?"

So, I added that all these reasons up, and concluded that a day trading, discretionary approach is what I should be looking at.

The problem is that throughout my trading career, I have very limited success with discretionary trading...

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