There is a big difference in paper trading and real trading. Someone had a quote somewhere "you can't train for war playing battlefield" You need to feel the raw emotions of risking something and deal with those emotions.
Fear and Greed play with your mind. Fear of losing money, or missing a trade and not making money, or killing a trade for it to then turn and go your way. Greed, okay maybe it's just fear ?? not making money by missing trades, I guess holding too long. Just jump in, it's fun, set an account ( in your head ) min value and when you hit that, well baptism of fire, stop trading, back to paper then repeat till you can handle the pressure of real hard earning $$$'s on the table.
You could try a TDAmeritrade account. Just put a relatively small amont of funds in, then pester support to allow you to have real time access for the demo mode of the ToS platform which simulates different types of trading including the different types of losses. Then you can set the demo account to a starting balance to test out leveraged trades and risky martingale strategies where you can see how quickly the account is decimated and hopefully learn and get an idea how to manage your risk and choice of trading strategy.
%% Cant go below zero with a cash account; + really cant hardly even go to zero with a dividend paying ETF. Make sure you do some stock investing mr Decoy; most millionaires do that. NOT a prediction, not long TSLA, + ETFs are not suitable for all investors .-Murray TT PS ;summer rally tends to be weakest,
It's a good thing that you've already had some demo experience. I hope you've also hat time to go through Baby Pips School of Pipsiology, they have a lot to offer and I believe you'll get clearer answers to your questions. You don't have to use leverage and its even better since you can only lose what you have. Be open minded as you trade
It's very crucial that you do as much research as possible before embarking on any trading activity. There are many ways through which traders fall into traps laid by scammers,a and leverage that is too high is one of those ways. There is no such thing as 'free' in a business like forex trading
The main downside of trading without leverage is that it is simply not accessible for most traders. ForexTrading without leverage means that changes in the price of an asset directly influence the trader’s bottom line. On the other hand,currency trading without leverage gives you less risk exposure. With regard to your 3rd ques,you should do some research first on different trading methodologies.