Regarding "actually making money"...
my 2 cents:
I have worked diligently for more than 10 years, trying just about
every trading style (position trading, swing trading, daytrading) and
every trading vehicle (stocks, commods, futures, options), and
finally settled on swing trading of stocks about 5 years ago. Swing
trading fits my style, temperament and available time. Your results
may vary.
I purchased a few proven systems and then used them as a starting
point for developing my own. I am not exaggerating when I say that
it has taken tens of thousands of hours of experimentation and
backtesting (and many more tens of thousands of dollars of losses),
to reach a point where I can make consistent profits - with a system
I can trust and not second-guess.
This was an important milestone for me - having systems that I KNEW
would work IF (and only if) I didn't mess with them. When you can
reach that trust and comfort level, autotrading is not necessary.
A new development: until a few weeks ago, I was using the entire
universe of stocks, filtered for setups each day with price, volume,
volatility (etc.) constraints.
I was profitable, but it occurred to me that I might high-grade my
trades by focusing on stocks constrained by things like institutional
sponsorship, relative strength, earnings growth and such. You may
recognize these as some of the constraints touted by Invstors
Business Daily, Navellier and the like. Now, my universe of stocks
is only about a thousand stocks (fewer trades), but I was able to
offset this by easing up on my setup criteria. The results are very
pleasing - approx. 30% more profit per trade.
To ease my stock selection using fundamental data, I switched daily
data providers, from Worden Bros. to Quotes Plus / Stock Picker Pro.
QP/SPP has almost every fundamental bit of information available AND
has internal Ranking (0-99) for such things as EPS, Relative Strength
and Group Strength.
These data can either be called in Amibroker, or QP/SPP can filter
and supply a list which can easily be pasted directly into an
AmiBroker watchlist. When I used IBD's online data for stock
selection, it was a bit more difficult. Using their columnar results
in Excel, I had to add a comma after each symbol and then transpose
the list into a row for pasting into AmiBroker.
btw I have no affiliation with Quotes Plus / Stock Picker Pro. and
have no beef with Worden Bros. I am, however, a huge fan of
Amibroker. Without this program, I could not have gotten here. I am
grateful for it and have touted it at every opportunity. Now, I am
also a fan of Quotes Plus.
I wanted to share my experience so that others who may not have
traveled as far down this path might know that it is definitely not
easy - but it IS possible to actually make money. And I have
certainly learned that there is always one more thing to try and
test - the challenge of trading and the satisfaction of using
Amibroker.
Good luck and good trading.