In the simplified examples I gave of how a trading bot works, do you see at any point where it says "buys shares based on prediction that it will raise above X value"? The answer is no. What I said it that based on signals of HOW THE MARKET IS BEHAVING, it reacts and performs an action being one of 3 base reactions: buy, sell or hold. There is a little complexity in how it performs the buy and sell actions ( being unit buy, unit multibuy, max buy, unit sell, unit multisell, or hard stop )
In rereading what I wrote, I thought I should clear this up.
In the case of an algorithmic trading bot, that is trained based on past market behavior, there is a level of prediction involved. The prediction is not in WHAT the market will do , but WHICH SIGNALS and at WHAT LEVELS those signals need to be at to decide an action.
It isn't "Buy now because the price will go up" , it is "buy now because it appears the market may be moving in such a direction to indicate that the short term minima is approaching"
The difference is subtle, but there.
Also, these signals change... hence I had the_brain and the_brawn... sticking with a single set of trigger values and trading behavior would result in poor long term behavior.
If i were to continue working on it, one of the first things to do is to change the way the_brain decides it's actions... right now, it picks the best algorithm and signal values based on the previous 12 hours of the market... it would be better to base the decision on hours -13 to -1 and then test the top 100 results agains hour -1 to 0. That might give a tighter response.
After a certain point, the bot development was only intellectual exercise due to the fact that it's obvious that the market can not take the kind of volume needed to make the kind of money that would make it interesting.