Automated trading platform

An automated trading platform is used both by trading system publishers, and the investors who subscribe to them. Using it, traders can track marked-to-market performance using several different metrics for verifiability.^[1] In addition to tracking performance of these "black box" systems, the automated trading platform also provides a venue to permit the system's buy/sell signals to be executed to the subscriber'sbrokerage account automatically. Some of the automated trading platforms are completely broker-agnostic and permit an interface with almost any brokerage firm.

The immediate benefit to investors is that it allows them to have insight into various trading systems that are on offer, which may make claims of profitability. The platform "allows people or institutions that believe they can outperform the market to prove to the public in a verifiable way that they indeed can do so."^[2] In the second stage of use, traders subscribe to one or more of these trading methodologies, and have the trades that are specified by the system executed automatically in a brokerage account.

Although turning over decisions and execution to a "black box" system requires the investor to give up an element of control, the automated trading platform does serve the purpose of allowing the trader to spend more time on strategy and on studying trends, rather than executing those strategies manually.