I have come to believe that one of the biggest advantages to automating a trading system is the elimination of human emotion and discretion. Never underestimate the ability of a human to sabotage a perfectly good mechanical or rules-based trading system.
After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands. Friedrich Nietzsche
The main man for DSP in trading is John Ehlers: http://www.stockspotter.com/In/Default.aspx http://www.mesasoftware.com/ Read his comments about FT in trading.
Easy edges is a loaded question. I have found an edge that is very easy to trade. It took significant time to identify this edge. I'm sure there are many more similar to my setup. I've trade it since 1998, average 2 trades per year, average 41% return per year. When one identifies a real edge, the emotional part of trading fades away. Best of luck to all.
That is true. With confirmed real edge psychological issues are much easier to cope with if they appear at all.
They cant prove it and they will never will , surely its a pattern that you see in your charts all the time , but thats called cherry picking , your eyes are looking and searching for that pattern when it happened , ok but what about the other 10 000 000 times when it failed ? There are no real studies that have been made on such patterns , when i say real study , i mean a study over a huge sample of charts that give you all the statistics for trading such patterns , i'm afraid giving 10 or even 1000 examples isnt really enough ...
And you know this, how? Whether or not it is successfully tested will of course depend on how it is defined. http://www.newyorkfed.org/research/epr/00v06n2/0007osle.pdf