I completely disagree with paper trading / demo trading. The hardest thing for me and for many traders is to control yourself once you have your money on the line. No way you will learn to control this number 1 skill by watching a number move and have $0 emotion on the line. Sorry, but no wonder you're 14 years in the red.
I don't have a PhD. But when I talk to people who supposedly have PhD or even MD's or JD's. I sometimes wonder who is the smarter of the two. Hehe.
At old age the issue of brain plasticity kicks in and makes it more difficult to generate new ideas. I've seen in a lot when I was working in industry. Old people have a hard time changing their way of thinking. Which is a bad trait for trading as it makes you slow to adapt to changes.
I admire your honesty. While working full time in IT, I traded manually between 1999 and 2004 and lost money every year, (the first 3 months of 2000 were quite profitable but lost it all back rest of the year). I took 2001 off but returned in 2002 only to lose even more money. Then in 2005 i switched to automated trading and since then have made money in the majority of years since. With automated trading at least you get winning trades around 35 to 50% of the time. When i manually day traded it felt like nearly every trade i made lost money. And if i were still trading manually today i would most probably still be losing every year. 19 years in a row. (I had good run manually trading binary options when they were still relatively new and the bid ask spread was tight and volatility was often mispriced, but i don't consider that real trading. Was more like shooting fish in a barrel.)
My experience after many losing years and a great deal of money, maybe lost about +$100k, was I began coding and back testing an auto system, that experience taught me the markets are controlled by machines, from then on, after dropping the idea of auto trading, went discretionary, with no emotions, also did no more backtesting and stopped all sim. Profitable since then. If one knows how to code, I believe this helps enormously. These days 90% of my trading analysis is from spreadsheets. Not fundamentals, but technicals. However not conventional TA, eg, no indicators whatsoever.
You misinterpret my point. I am 14 years in the red partly because I have not spent enough time in the demo room and have used real money to try to learn this trading game.
You would have felt some pain and fear. If you manage to work out where you were going wrong and can think out a profitable system, then you have the fear to overcome. It is kind of like a large circle, we begin feeling confident and finish up with the fear which has come from the numerous losses. If you overcome the fear along with a winning system, then be careful because the market has a way to continually humble us. One needs confidence but also large amounts of respect (healthy fear)
This just proves what I have been saying: Trading is ageless. Anybody can learn at any age. Keep going, @Illini Trader!! You never know, @jinxu, he might outlive us all.
Backtesting should always be your starting point in designing your trade strategy especially with today's technology at. Next, paper trading / demo trading should always be for putting that backtested trade strategy into a trading plan along with learning how to use your broker trade execution platform...learn how to use your charting platform...all in a simulated trading environment. Yet, be very careful...that paper trading / demo trading should only be long enough until you've master your broker trade execution platform and all other software you're going to be using while putting that backtested trade strategy into a viable trading plan. Next, if the backtesting has positive results...you then move into real money trading with a very small position size and this can last months while for some may be years before any normal position size trading can be used. You stay in the backtesting mode until you designed or find something that gives you positive results...even if it takes months or years. A trade strategy is just one chapter in the trading plan. The phase where you move from backtesting your trade strategy into a trading plan is where most get lost or stuck. Unfortunately, many then move into the paper trading / demo trading without a viable trading plan and then they then move into real money trading...resulting just another failed trader or as you call it...in the red for many years. Those that's been at this consistently for many years trying to get green...they've mixed up the above so that its a mess. For example, trading with real money via a trade strategy or trading plan that has not been backtested nor paper traded (demo traded). P.S. Backtesting doesn't imply you use the results of someone else as truth or viable. In contrast, you must backtest the trade strategy yourself in your trading plan to see if it merits spending any kind'uv time in paper trading / demo trading...all prior to any real money trading. Simply, do not use paper trading / demo trading as a substitute for backtesting...you'll just end up spinning the wheel for many years. wrbtrader
The point is that someone should not be trading during work...they can trade other times of the day that does not conflict with their job. Yet, after backtesting and they determine their trade signals only appear during work...they will then need to adjust their job schedule so that they can trade those trade signals. The boss / supervisor will be happy they've hired someone devoted to their job instead of hiring someone doing something else they weren't hired to do during work hours.