If you had a person to conduct your trading - buying and selling- by following a strict set of guidelines without making decisions because they have already been made - pre-market, would you feel better and more comfortable by avoiding market action throughout the day?
If so do you think it would hinder performance or would your presence hinder performance?
I think the question comes from the wrong direction sort of.
How do you behave or what are your behavioral responses when engaged in the market trading process? Failure to understand this point 1st reason for high rate of failure in trading.
Can you change your behaviors required? Unlikely for most hence next reason high failure rate.
If you cannot change to appropriate behaviors what structure will you use as a defense against inappropriate behaviors. This will be to some degree different for everyone.
Snake understanding your own behaviors that cause problems is the starting point then building a structure accordingly to over come them. Again this will be to some degree different for everyone
This maybe as Michael goes about it at one end or at the other end of the scale could be like a trader I know that is pretty much intuitive.
I personally fall to the discretionary side but no intuition what so ever.
I use simple structure to identify market conditions to decide on position sizing and generally only trade with clear trends. Not to many trades this year but my account is up nicely (all be it modestly) for the year to date.
Testing to me is the central part of the whole process and applies fully to any trading method all be it the testing will take on different ways to achieving the same out come.
I see it time over time that good traders test extensively and examine the results closely before putting a single dollar on the line. One of the clear reasons I turned profitable.
Punters throw money at the market then try work out why it failed after wards creating massive bad behaviors as a result. This was my own path a very painful, very long way getting to make consist profits from the market.
I suspect the fact you ask the question means you already know the answer for yourself at least.