I hear people bashing sim trading alot, the "It's not real money so it's not the same" argument. But it is an excellent way to train oneself to execute their plan on a repetitive basis, similar to building muscle memory in sports. Think about how many golf balls Tiger Woods has hit in practice over his lifetime, or how many pitches Roger Clemens threw outside the real games. Or how many elbows Ron Artest ("Metta World Peace", really?) threw on the neighborhood b-ball court. Wen I find myself failing to execute properly, I go back to the simulator and work on straightening out my slice. Practicing with real money gets expensive...learned that the hard way.
Yes... but you forgot forward testing. It's not worth anything till you can trade it well in real time. BTW all automated systems will fail eventually. An evolving organism requires one to understand it.
All systems, automated or not, fail eventually. There are 2 associated issues: 1) how does one detect the failure of a system? I will argue here that it is easier for an automated system, as the execution is systematic, error-free, as a result one can monitor the system performance from its actual results. On the other side, if the system is traded manually, the actual results are usually nowhere close to what the system results would be if automated (non-systematic execution, execution errors), making it impossible to monitor the system performance itself, unless through ongoing automated testing of it. 2) what does one do after deciding a system has failed? Automated traders spend most of their time on R&D, making the generation of new systems their top priority. As a result, they can introduce new strategies even prior to an existing one failing. Discretionary traders (day-traders) spend most of their time trading ... As a result, they are much more in-tune with the day-to-day changes of the markets, and usually can (& will) alter strategies to adjust to current market conditions ... until it no longer works at all.
Fear means you don't trust your strategy/tactics enough. Either something is wrong with it or if you are sure technical side is OK, practice more until you feel greed instead of the fear whenever see your signal.
One can "try" meditation. After a while you are accustomed watching your thoughts, emotions and letting them pass through. You will be more aware during your daily life and trading. With fear also first you will detect it in your body, tense feeling in the stomach for example, and just label it: hello fear, I know you. You can go now, I am busy following my trading rules.
Fear can help to keep you focussed. It can test your commitment to your trading strategy. Learn to control it and it doesn't need to be an enemy.
Scared money is only fixed through confidence. Confidence comes from properly testing your system, and trading with money you can afford to lose. If you don't have the discipline to do that kinda testing work before you put your capital at risk, I doubt you'll have the discipline to gain consistency in your trading career.
There are all kinds of things that lead to fear. You cannot generalize that. Some fears are direct results of bad trading practices like overleverage. Those fears is there telling you to stop doing the wrong thing and you should correct the bad practice instead of getting numb. Some fears are false signals. For example your position is doing fine and you are not risking beyond your tolerance but the price action is "ticking you off". That is something you have to fix. Usually over time your experience will overcome these issues. Good luck.