@Thirstywolf - Glad to hear you account is up 270% since March. That is about 6 months. You are the only person I have come across who has made money over such a period of time. But I haven't been active in the forum for about five months.

@Mothership - The software is great and not two hard to use if you have an aptitude for programing. System development is bloody hard. Especially if you are not already trading profitably.

There was a fellow posting on this forum who did a lot of work to systematically create code that allowed him to then systematically test as many ideas that he could find or come up with. I think it was swingtraderkk. I followed his posts for months and last I remember he gave up. He had some plausible stuff, but I vaguely recall that he didn't exactly uncap an oil well.

In my opinion, he was doing it backwards, which is exactly the way I was also doing it for years and years. I reckon you have to start with something that works for you, that you understand and that you have already traded for many many trades / hours. With the knowledge of the nuances of the market and the system, you can then go about trying to mechanise your trading process. Trying to take an idea and see if it can be programmed is difficult to do. I don't really want to try to explain it any better because really I am not any good at trading. I just know what I have tried and what doesn't work for me. You can read books like the ones jcl suggests and Charles Le Beaus book on system development.

By all means, program with the free version. If you do get something that works, then run it on a demo account for a couple months, until it has seen some different market types and at least a hundred trades. Then if you are really convinced, then buy the software and go live.

And for Zs, subscribe rather than buy. If you make money, then use that money to buy it. It may end up costing you a hundred dollars more. But if they don't work for you, like they haven't for most of us (unless you were in Z5 three years ago), then it has only cost you $100, not $500.

If you are young and you really want a career in trading, go join a prop firm. Read One Good Trade. Then after a few years of trading successfully there, turn your working trading plan into an automated robot.