hey, at least he was paper trading and is scratch in real life. the $20 bill I found in my laundry yesterday beat the street for the past few months it was gone too. Im going to check my couch cushions for more unrealized gains vs investing.
The thing about paper trading is you always get the "last"price as your buy order for whatever size you want. In real life, that doesnt happen. You make an order for 2000 shares and you dont always get the "last" price. You might only get a partial fill and your order might push the market up or down. I remember one time when i first started trading I took a rather large position in CVX (about 5000 shares) The price went against me and i paniced. I tried to sell with limit orders but everytime i placed it, the price would drop a few cents lower. I finally just did a market order because this kept happening and my market order dropped the price of CVX by 30 cents instantly. (that was my worst day ever trading. Lost over 7k that day on pure emotionaly trading) If that was a paper trading day, i KNOW i would've told myself "oh, I got out at this price because that was the last trade" and maybe my paper loss that day would've been ALOT less. Same thing when the price goes up. If you have a few 1000 shares, you selling them can drop the price of that stock and you dont get out at the "last" price. You get out at whatever someone buys your shares at.