Discretionary trading – A style where human judgment drives each trade decision. Discretionary traders may use charts and rules as guides, but they retain final say on entries/exits. As Topstep notes, the key difference is that systematic strategies generate definite signals, whereas discretionary traders “make the final call on price and time”. Discretionary forex robots are rare by definition since they require human input, but some hybrid systems allow a human to override automated signals. In educational terms, a discretionary approach means the algorithm might highlight a setup (e.g. via an alert), but the trader must confirm it. In contrast to systematic code, discretionary systems are hard to backtest because they rely on expertise. For completeness, we note systematic trading is fully algorithmic, encoding entry, exit, and risk rules in code. In our glossary, “discretionary vs systematic” highlights that strategies can either be purely rules-based (EA/cBot) or human-filtered.

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