At first I just ran on a paper trading API. After a couple months of it showing it wouldn’t go off the rails and make completely insane trades, I asked it to update the code for my real brokerage’s API and linked it to a new account with a very small amount of money deposited.

Edit: just realized I didn’t answer your question directly. Yes, it both identifies and executes trades, and then closes them when they meet certain profit/loss criteria.

I asked it to write a trading algo, which I gave a very small amount of money to. So far it’s up slightly, but it’s making trades it generally holds for several days, so it’s much too soon to really say whether it’ll outperform the market over time.