Automatic Trading System Design

This chapter will focus on the problem of design of automatic trading system for futures trading, specifically its design lifecycle. This is a task that can be divided into several phases. In this chapter we focus on the selection of proper environment (i.e. choose the right market and commodity), choosing appropriate set of tools (fundamental or technical analysis indicators) and creating the automatic trading system itself, which has to follow rules of money (risk) management and trading psychology. The chapter stresses the importance of the system`s acceptability for the user. The last phase covers the topic of testing and optimization. This chapter provides a general overview of each of these phases together with a discussion of typical issues.