It covers the hours you cannot
Your setup does not check whether you are awake. Crypto never closes, and the London open is the middle of the night for half the people trading it.
Trading Bots
The only trading bot worth having is one you built.
A trading bot is just a program that follows your rules without getting tired or talking itself out of them. That is the entire idea. The problem has always been that building one meant becoming a programmer first — so most people end up renting somebody else's instead.
6 MB · Windows, macOS, Linux · No credit card
Why the bots for sale are mostly not worth buying
Start with the arithmetic. If a bot dependably made money, selling copies of it to thousands of strangers would be a peculiar way to extract that value — and every additional buyer trading the same signals makes it work slightly less well.
Then the practical problems. You cannot audit logic you are not allowed to read. You inherit whatever risk rules the author happened to like, which are not yours. And on a prop firm account, running a recognisable commercial bot can breach the terms outright — several firms will not fund an account using one.
A bot you described yourself, whose code sits on your own disk in a language you can read, has none of those problems. That used to require being a developer. It does not any more.
What actually changes when you automate
It follows the rule you wrote
Not the one you revised on a bad afternoon. The stop stays where you put it and the size stays where you set it, every single time.
It scales past your attention
The edge might work on forty instruments. You can watch four. Software does not have that limit.
It does not invent an edge
Worth saying plainly: a bot running a losing strategy loses faster and more consistently. The idea still has to be yours, and it still has to be good.
Wherever you already trade
There is no supported-venue list. These are simply the platforms people ask about most — if yours is missing, you describe it and the connection gets built.
Crypto trading bots
Runs around the clock, which is the whole argument — crypto does not close, and you have to sleep. Coinbase and Kraken both work this way.
Forex bots and Expert Advisors
The MetaTrader world, where a bot is an EA written in MQL5. You describe the strategy; the EA gets written and filed where MetaTrader expects it.
Stock and futures algos
Interactive Brokers reaches equities, options and futures. Open Trader Workstation and the API wiring is handled for you.
Prop firm automation
Daily loss caps and drawdown limits enforced by code, on an account where breaking one ends the whole thing.
Trading bot FAQ
What is a trading bot?
A program that watches a market and places orders according to rules you defined in advance. Nothing more mysterious than that. The rules can be as simple as "buy when RSI drops below 30" — the value is not cleverness, it is that software follows the rule every time, including on the day you would not have.
Do trading bots actually work?
A bot does exactly what its strategy says, so the question is really whether the strategy works. Automation does not create an edge. What it removes is the gap between the rules you wrote down and the trades you actually took — the missed entries, the widened stop, the position you sized up to win a loss back.
Should I buy a trading bot?
Generally no. If a bot reliably made money, selling it to thousands of strangers would be a strange way to profit from it. You also cannot inspect what you cannot read, you inherit whatever risk logic the seller chose, and in prop firm accounts a recognisable commercial bot can breach the terms outright. A bot you built and can read has none of those problems.
Do I need to know how to code to build one?
Not any more. Describe your entries, exits, sizing and the loss you refuse to take, in your own words, and you get a working strategy plus readable code you own. If you already code, it just gets you there faster.
How much does it cost to run a trading bot?
QuantIDE is free — a 6 MB download, no credit card. It runs on the computer you already have, and a running strategy keeps going after you close the app, so you do not need to rent a server to get started. Your broker or exchange still charges its normal fees.
Is automated trading legal?
Yes, and it is how most volume in most markets is executed. Individual venues and prop firms have their own rules — some restrict specific styles like grid, martingale or latency arbitrage — so read the terms for wherever you trade. Nothing here helps you get around them.
What is the safest way to start?
Take a strategy you already trade by hand and have understood for a while. Backtest it against real history. Run it on a paper or demo account and watch it long enough to see it behave badly at least once. Then go live in a size you would not mind being wrong about.
Build one from a strategy you already trust.
Not a bot somebody sold you. Describe the rules you already trade by hand, backtest them on real history, and keep the code.
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