Autotrading will still get you banned. But yeah what you describe sounds like it's from back in the day. Nowadays there are three modes with the standard pftp: autotrade, autotrade only while at computer (redundant, I know), and manual trade.
But chaining with FXP is just fine now (virtually all courier groups do it with the exception of 0day). When I was a courier our pftp coordinated with the other ones in the group and chained them via country, ranking, and by 3-4 other factors I can get into if you'd like.
Are the site rankings published anywhere? When I came up we had e-zines like the Netmonkey Weekly Report. Damn they were cool! :)
FWIW: I traded 0sec to places like: Falsehood, Hades, VDRLake, Firesite, Enigma, Etirnity (whose dutch admins couldn't spell, but their site owned anyway :p) and, my favourite, Stairway to Heaven.
But chaining with FXP is just fine now (virtually all courier groups do it with the exception of 0day). When I was a courier our pftp coordinated with the other ones in the group and chained them via country, ranking, and by 3-4 other factors I can get into if you'd like.