I have decided to change my Trading Experience level from Advanced into Intermediate and this is my journal where I will chronicle a few elements on my way to moving back to Advanced.
I didn't do this out of inferiority, false humility, or anything similar. In general, I am happy with my trading account progress and the accounts of those for whom I manage. Without fail, any trader out there who has made the crossover into being consistently profitable and be able to do that consistently for other people's accounts as well would be considered advanced in my definition. But, as the age old adage seems to go, as I get to know more, it seems that there is so very little that I know.
So here is my quest - automation. And, with that, will definitely come a better understanding of my own trading methodologies and, without a doubt, opportunity to improve on them. Every strategy that I trade, currently, are purely mechanical strategies so the act of automating them should not be significantly difficult, but the many more numbers that I will be able to come up with will be incredible in order to make what I am doing even more rock solid. As it stands now, I have 100s of thousands of lines of Excel spreadsheets with advanced functions and calculations to give me all kinds of numbers - which have given me the initial faith needed to continue developing my systems into what they are now - but by learning how to automate my strategies, I will be able to get data and do calculations much faster allowing me to spend my time on system development rather than manually plotting data from a chart for initial backtests.
Currently I am watching the automation webinar series by kevinkdog at the recommendation of @bigmike and so far this is really good. I recommend it highly to any new Elite Member.