Automated Trading: How to Trade Automatically (Guide)

Automated trading is arguably the ideal way to trade without the risk of making emotional mistakes (excitement, hesitation, etc.). It lets you execute orders faster, follow your trading strategy to the letter and trade 24/7 without spending hours monitoring your positions. Properly configured, automated trading can significantly boost your gains. Read this guide to the end before you start trading automatically.

How to Do Automated Trading in 2025

Find a broker that lets you trade automatically through its platforms
Open an account with the broker and set up your account on the broker’s automated trading platform, such as MetaTrader 4 or MetaTrader 5
Deposit funds into your account
Launch the automated trading platform and configure the automated trading settings (on MetaTrader, for example, these are the Expert Advisor settings): asset, take profit, stop loss, etc.
Start the automated trading program.

On related topics, our articles “Automated Trading Platform” and “Bénéfice Max Trading Review 2026” are a good complement to this read.

What Is Automated Trading?

Automated trading means using software to manage a portfolio of financial securities autonomously. Also known as algorithmic trading or algo trading, it lets traders put the computing power of software and computers to work managing their capital, without having to carry out the trades themselves.

What Is Automated Trading Software?

Automated trading software is a set of algorithms a trader uses to automate their trades on the market. The software executes a predefined trading strategy based on algorithms and signals that let it open and close positions without any human intervention.

How Does Automated Trading Work?

Automated trading starts with configuring the software. This configuration defines the trading robot’s scope of activity and reflects the specifics of the strategy the trader wants to implement. Once the trader has set the parameters (assets, take profit, stop loss, etc.), the software analyzes the market from different angles. This analysis lets it identify opportunities to enter or exit positions.

What Are the Types of Automated Trading in November?

Fully automated trading: here the trading robot has complete autonomy over managing the trader’s capital. The automated trading software opens and closes positions, calculates risk and sets the size of each position. Once the initial setup is done, the trader is completely passive.
Assisted trading: here the trading software analyzes the market. Based on the indicators or signals built into its programming, it can send the trader alerts suggesting actions to take. Assisted trading can also mean the software managing positions the trader has already opened.

Which Assets Can You Trade Automatically?

Minor (GBP/JPY, NZD/JPY or GBP/CAD), major (USD/CHF, USD/CAD or GBP/USD) and exotic (EUR/TRY, JPY/NOK) currency pairs
Shares of listed companies
Stock indices such as the DAX, Nasdaq or CAC 40
Commodity contracts (gold, oil, cocoa, corn, etc.)
ETFs
Synthetic indices and other assets

Who Can Do Automated Trading?

Any individual or financial institution that wants to invest in the stock market can use automated trading. Thanks to its advantages, it is a form of trading that suits every profile.

Independent traders who don’t have the time to trade manually and follow their strategy (for example scalping or day trading) can use automated trading. The same goes for novice traders who are unable to build and execute a trading strategy themselves.

Financial institutions also use it, on a much larger scale than independent traders, through high-frequency trading.

What Are the Automated Trading Strategies?

Third-party strategies: this approach uses commercial third-party software that you connect to your account on your trading platform. Its success depends heavily on how well that software performs.
High-frequency strategy: a high-frequency strategy uses automation to place a very large number of orders within a short time frame. Only technical analysis is used, and positions are held for extremely short periods.
Trend-following strategy: this auto-trading strategy involves defining a time frame that serves as the software’s reference. Over these intervals, the software analyzes market moves and manages positions based on the results.

What Is the Best Automated Trading Software?

MetaTrader

MetaTrader 4 (MT4) and MetaTrader 5 (MT5) are the two available versions of this trading platform. They include a programming language that lets you build your own trading robot. There is also MetaEditor, a feature that helps you create trading robots.

The Strategy Tester (on MT4) is another feature that complements the previous one: it lets you test an automated trading strategy. MetaTrader also lets you install Expert Advisors from its own app store or other compatible sources.

ProRealTime

This is one of MetaTrader’s main competitors. It has nearly a hundred indicators that let you automate analysis of the markets you plan to invest in. ProRealTime also lets you create your own trading algorithms.

TradingView

TradingView is technical analysis software popular with traders for its user-friendliness. It offers a range of indicators and a social network feature, which lets new traders save time by drawing on the strategies of experienced traders.

ZuluTrade

This auto-trading software lets you trade automatically through social trading and copy trading. You can copy winning strategies and earn passive gains. ZuluTrade also offers alerts for major economic events.

DupliTrade

This solution is integrated directly with partner brokers, each of which uses it in its own way to build automation schemes based on the best signals.

Advantages of Automated Trading

Automated trading eliminates the risks and trading errors linked to cognitive and emotional factors (hesitation, excitement, etc.).
The backtesting tools that come with the robot let you evaluate and improve an automated trading strategy
Automating your trading means orders are placed much faster.
Auto trading gives you flawless execution of your chosen strategy
Automated trading saves the trader time, freeing them up for other activities
Automated trading lets you trade 24 hours a day, opening up more financial markets and opportunities
Properly configured, automated trading can also significantly increase your gains or the return on your capital.

Disadvantages of Automated Trading

You need to monitor the trading robot. This supervision is essential to make sure it delivers the expected results for the strategy it is running.
Trading robots lack transparency. They are based on algorithms whose workings users do not always fully understand.
Glitches or bugs can occur.
An automated trading program cannot improvise during crises or crashes, or when market conditions prevent an order from being executed.

Why Use Automated Trading?

To reduce the impact of your own emotions and cognitive biases on the day-to-day execution of your trading strategy
To benefit from the computing power of algorithms for more reliable analysis
To trade the markets continuously, 24 hours a day
To trade online almost all the time without spending hours monitoring or opening / closing positions (trading with more free time)
To increase your expected gains, with more opportunities identified and a strategy executed with absolute discipline
To go beyond the limits of manual order execution and place more than one order at a time
To run scalping strategies on forex and other CFDs more efficiently

How to Choose Automated Trading Software

The first criterion for choosing automated trading software is user-friendliness. It is vital that the software is easy to get to grips with. This makes it easier to configure and to make the corrective updates needed to get the best performance from your strategy.
Consider the features available. Choose software with a large number of features so you can develop your automated trading strategies without being limited by what the software can do.
Automated trading software should be as customizable as possible. This lets you implement your own strategies and update them based on the results you get in the markets.
Question the return figures advertised by commercial software. For marketing reasons, these figures may be exaggerated or completely unrealistic. Compare different software on this point, look for user reviews and pay particular attention to the indicators used.
Compare and test different automated trading software. Most offer trial periods. Make the most of them to get a practical feel for the software and how to use it.

How to Build an Automated Trading System

Get proper programming training: this is the essential prerequisite for building an automated trading system. Admittedly, some software and platforms offer tools for creating Expert Advisors and other trading systems; MT4 and MT5, for example, have a programming language designed for automated trading. But real coding training (C#, Python, etc.) will give you far more options for building better-performing solutions
Study historical data carefully: it is by observing historical market data that you can identify the elements that will form the basis of your strategy: recurring patterns, correlations…
Analyze the fundamentals of the assets you will trade: technical analysis is the main pillar of auto-trading strategies. But when you build one, you need to know the fundamentals of the securities the strategy will be used on
Define your strategy: the software applies a sequence of logical instructions automatically. So you need to define your strategy clearly, for example using a flowchart.
Backtest the strategy (including trading costs in the backtest): once the strategy is in place, you need to test it with a backtest. Make sure you have enough historical data. To be sure your strategy is profitable, you must also factor in the trading costs (spreads) charged by your broker.
Optimize: this step follows directly from the backtest. The charts from your backtest can help you identify where to improve your strategy or the indicators and signals used. You can run several optimizations to reach a final result.

What Are the Key Elements of an Auto-Trading Strategy?

Your automated trading strategy must include real-time analysis of the price trend of the securities it is applied to
An automated buy signal is crucial so the software can seize profit opportunities as they arise in the market, without the trader stepping in.
An automated sell signal naturally complements the buy signal.
Setting a stop loss is essential to manage risk and protect your capital
An automatic take profit lets you lock in gains on winning trades, for a strategy that performs over the long term.

Example of Automated Forex Trading on MetaTrader

You choose to trade EUR/USD automatically on MT5.
Open the price chart for this pair.
Open the “Navigator” window and double-click the Expert Advisor called “Moving Average.ex5”, or simply drag and drop this EA onto the currency pair’s price chart. Then start the EA.
Whenever a Japanese candlestick closes above the MA12 (12-period moving average), the auto-trading program automatically buys at market.
Whenever a Japanese candlestick closes below the MA12 (12-period moving average), the software sells at market.

How to Test an Automated Trading Strategy and Software

Use a demo account

A demo trading account lets you trade in real market conditions using virtual capital. This lets you test how well a strategy set up with a piece of software works, and check the results in real time in terms of gains. The advantage of this way of testing automated trading software is that it is risk-free. Also, the market data used in demo trading is recent, even live.

Run a backtest

Backtesting is also done automatically: it involves running or testing a strategy on historical data, to see whether the strategy would have had enough predictive power to let a user make gains over the period covered by the data. Backtesting is the most widely used method for testing a strategy implemented with algorithmic trading software.

But there is a significant risk: confirmation bias, described by the term curve fitting. Strategies are built from analysis of historical data, and some strategies, even when verified by a backtest, are only valid in a specific set of conditions, namely those of the historical data used.

Since the future is uncertain, a strategy based solely on curve fitting can produce disappointing results. To avoid this, you can use a Monte Carlo simulation. It simulates price movements using a tree in which each node is a possible price value given the previous price.

How to Optimize an Automated Trading Expert Advisor on MetaTrader

Choose the Expert Advisor to optimize (from the list of EAs) and the underlying security
Set a time frame (interval) for the EA and the period over which the optimization will run
Start the optimization.

You can also use MetaTrader’s Strategy Tester. Once the tester is open, go to the “Optimization” section, configure it and start it.

Tips for Getting Started with Automated Trading

Choose a good broker. This choice determines the conditions under which you will trade. The broker should be regulated, have responsive customer service and low costs, make it easy to use trading robots, be secure and offer a demo account.
Learn the mathematical models used for risk management. This knowledge is very useful for building and testing an automated trading strategy.
Control timing. This means controlling when you trade, how long positions are held and the robot’s analysis intervals.
Choose a high-performance trading platform that is well suited to automated trading
Practice on a demo account to make sure you have mastered how the trading robot works and that the auto-trading strategy you plan to implement is effective (a backtest can also help you test the strategy beforehand).