Question 1

How can you tell if a trading bot is working when it is not placing trades?

Accepted Answer

Only if it records the decision not to trade. A bot that logs trades alone produces an identical empty log whether it evaluated the market and declined, crashed on startup, or silently stopped being scheduled. Systems that record a deliberate no-action entry each time they run let you distinguish a cautious strategy from a dead process; systems that do not cannot be monitored on quiet days at all.

Question 2

Why would an AI trading agent go days without placing a trade?

Accepted Answer

Because most strategies spend most of their time waiting. Entry conditions such as a trend confirmation, a spread wide enough to clear fees, or a session window are unmet far more often than they are met. A strategy that trades on a genuine edge will hold through the large majority of its evaluations, so a long quiet stretch is normal behaviour rather than evidence of a fault.

Question 3

Should an automated trader log every time it runs?

Accepted Answer

It should log every time it makes a decision, which is not the same thing. A run that exits early because it is not yet due to act made no judgement about the market, and recording those produces high-volume noise that buries the real decisions. The useful distinction is between "evaluated and chose to wait" and "was not asked to evaluate".

One post tagged with "automation"

What does a trading bot do when it decides not to trade?