大多数个人交易者，无论是业余的还是专业的，都是在存在情绪风险的情况下进行交易。对于某些投资者来说，私欲、贪婪、企盼会降低知觉的敏锐，对于另一些投资者来讲，偏见、恐惧会动摇信心。当这些投资者进入金融市场后，人类的情绪往往使得投资者变得不稳，缺乏自律。这样程序化交易的理念就出现了，而且特别要提出的是这一理念主要是应用于以期货来代表的衍生品市场。
程序化交易是克服人类情感的手段。一个以计算机为基础的交易系统仅仅根据事先编好的规则来发出指令。这一系统确定进入市场和离开市场的时机、目标利润以及止损的价位。一个系统的二进制编码是没有感情的，因此系统不存在对交易的偏见、感觉、担忧。所以系统化交易的执行是客观、自律、量化以及科学的。与最初凭借个人临时判断的交易相比，程序化交易具有如下优点：(1)跟随长期系统化策略。(2)严格的执行纪律。(3)资金使用量根据系统合理调整。(4)多市场分散化交易。(5)持续关注全球市场机会。(6)系统的预期收益/损失是对投资者有利的。
尽管程序化交易的优缺点还有争论，但是继部分优秀的个人投资者之后，机构投资者开始大量采用程式化交易的理念，从精细的小规模交易公司、做市商到大规模的对冲基金、投资银行，程序化交易正在成为发展的方向。
Most individual traders, whether amateur or professional, are in the presence of emotional risk in the conduct transactions. For some investors, desires, greed, hoping will reduce the perception of sharp, some investors are concerned for others, prejudice, fear, confidence will be shaken. When these investors to enter the financial market, human emotions often cause investors to become unstable, and lacking self-discipline. The concept of such proceedings, transactions appeared, and in particular to make is the idea is mainly used to represent the derivatives with futures.
Program trading is a means to overcome the human emotions. A computer-based trading system based solely on pre-programmed rules to issue commands. The system to determine access to markets and out of the market timing, target profit and stop-loss price. A system of binary encoding is not emotional, so the system does not prejudice the existence of the transaction, feelings, worries. Therefore, the implementation of systematic trading is an objective, self-discipline, quantitative and scientific. The temporary judge with the initial transaction with individuals compared to program trading has the following advantages: (1) to follow the long-term systematic strategy. (2) strictly enforce discipline. (3) reasonable use of funds to adjust the amount according to the system. (4) multi-market transactions decentralized. (5) continued focus on global market opportunities. (6) system, the expected gain / loss is an investor-friendly.
Despite the advantages and disadvantages of program trading also controversial, however, following some outstanding individual investors, the institutional investors are beginning to deal a lot with the concept of stylized, from the fine, small-scale trading firms, market makers to large-scale hedge fund , investment banks, program trading is becoming the direction of development.
