After not being successful at discretionary trading, I've decided that I will not trade any more until I have a system that has backtested positive.

I just watched a video on you tube about the trade ideas oddsmaker. They make it look so simple. In just 8 minutes they produced a strategy that was 60% successful with a near 1:1 reward/risk ratio. This should, in theory, be positive.

But what about in real trading? I'm a bit skeptical because it just seems too easy. Let's say I fork out the $1100 for oddsmaker and tweak the strategy to give a slightly better reward risk ratio, can I expect it to be positive with real trading?

I know that getting filled is the biggest variable. What are some other reasons that one might not receive the same performance as the backtests indicate?

I'm not just talking about trade-ideas, I'm also doing tests with NinjaTrader. That way I can test with more than 2 weeks of data, plus it's free.

I'm looking forward to hearing others' experiences with automated trading, especially whether you are getting the same performance as the backtesting suggests.