BigMike is of course good...

What other forums are active?

I came across "BigMikeTrading"...

What others would you recommend?

Thanks!

besides futures.io (formerly BMT)...ummm, google?

donnaforex.com ; mostly forex and mt4 and folks going through their "EA" craze phase.
some of the residents continue to make up "statistics" and tweaks to the EA of the month trying to prove it works when they all fail
and never live up to their marketing hype and the advertised "profitable stats curve over the last "year"".
Then quietly they go to the next one and the next one.

BigMike verve good

I know on elitetraders that there is a lot of (at least it seems like) seasoned traders sighing and shaking their heads whenever beginners say that they want to develop their own automated trading system - actually I can quote someone saying 'new lamb for the slaughter' is there a reason why?

MyTotoro 

I know on elitetraders that there is a lot of (at least it seems like) seasoned traders sighing and shaking their heads whenever beginners say that they want to develop their own automated trading system - actually I can quote someone saying 'new lamb for the slaughter' is there a reason why?

Because it is not as easy as beginners think.

traderwerks 

Because it is not as easy as beginners think.

I can appreciate that, I love your signature, I'm actually a PMath undergrad and I know while math seems easy on the surface, it can get really messy really quickly.

On that note, is there a starting place? While sticking to simple and common indicators is probably the best way (I spoke to a quant who worked at a quantshop) while it wasn't automated trading, it was heavy stochastics - it's much more interesting and ... seductive when you're using algo/complex systems. I'm not looking for a system to click run but somewhere to learn what the process is: from research, to writing, to optimizing.