How come sometimes you demo trade profitably for months and then go live with the same exact strategy giving the same exact signals but lose money?
no matter what, you jhust don't treat your paper money like your real money. Even when writing them down, I think you will probably write them down differently, skewing your results? Just no substitute for trading your actual money.
Sometimes its unrealistic fills, sometime the demo accts show a "slower" market and the live acct speed is real time and fast! and other times, its the emotional aspect that wasn't there on the demo that comes into play/
Ok cuz I've been demo trading for the last 3 weeks and making ~$400 per day with 1 down day. Today I'm down $360 already doing the EXACT SAME THING.
Have you noticed the demo acct is slower than the live acct? are you SURE you are trading the same way? Also, keep in mind today is much more volitile due to the news.
I am doing both simultaneously many months /in buttontrader/. It is not any difference in fills, slippage - just psychology. My daily standard - trading same signals is something like $100 real and $2500 papertrading. Same strategies, same account size. Day after day. I know it from speleology. Doing same simple movements when you are on earth surface and if you are on 500 m vertical cliff is not the same. But nobody was born like champion, it needs a lot of effort.
Absolutely positive. I have system generated signals from something I programmed. Entry and exit points are given at the point of entry. Sometimes exit points are adjusted as the position stays open but they're always known with no room for interpretation. I have the live and demo (OEC) charts running side by side and they're updating almost exactly at the same time. Maybe i picked a bad day to start?
or maybe it was just your systems day to be down? since you mentioned you did have a down day on sim before.
I've been live for a while, and essentially break even factoring in commissions. When I was paper trading, i was up quite a bit. I figure trading live is just part of the learning curve and it's going to take a while. Today is the worst day I've had since my start a few months ago, so who knows? ----EDIT---- I'm taking myself out for the day before I do more damage, there will be better days.