I couldn't agree more with oldtime regrding profits, but I'll go further. If you are taking small profits just to take them you WILL lose over time I guarantee it 1000%. Taking small profits suggests you are trading scared, btw. Good traders learn to love small losses, not small gains. Simply put, your profits need to be on average AT LEAST double your gains. Even on a 2:1 ratio you can b/e being right just 1/3rd of the time. The key is to know what your willing to lose. That will tell you position size, what your target profit is, and often times whether it's even worth the effort. One more thing..If you trade the same size all the time you will lose. Sometimes I wonder why I even trade unless I'm willing to go crazy on size since those trades make me most all my money. Unforetunetly those "all in", "hey, Mr broker I need more margin for a few hours" setups don't occur all that often. The bottomline is you can take small profits for 6 months straight then lose all those gains and more in 3 days if you play the game that way. Been there, done that.
I'm not taking small profits all the time, just when I'm not as confident in the direction. I still don't see how this is at all a flawed strategy. If you're up, you're up. As long as you keep the same discipline when things don't go your way, and keep capital preservation top of mind, I don't see why/how you could possibly "guarantee 1000%" that I will lose. Also, regarding "trading scared". What's wrong with that? Acknowledgement of the fact that I could be wrong, and that it could go strongly in the other direction, is helpful. The longer that your movement is consolidating, and NOT going in your direction, probably the more risk that exists of it going the other way. Getting out, taking your profits, and not exposing yourself to this risk any longer seems pretty smart, to me.
I don't feel invincible at all, nor is my confidence through the roof. I don't doubt that things will be different when I go live, hence the point of this thread. But if it's mostly emotional, and if what I'm trading is an accurate portrayal of market data/behavior - which it seems to be, short of slippage - that gives me confidence.
Look at your simulator trades closely. You said you use limit orders. How does Strategy Runner fill limit orders in sim? Some simulators don't simulate your actual position in the order book and fill you if the price touches your price limit. You need to assume that the price trades THROUGH your limit price to get filled. I would also recommend logging all of your trades, and tracking the cumulative statistics: Win % Average Winning Trade Average Losing Trade Largest Losing Trade That should help you better understand your performance over time. Also, look at each of the 10 days. Were most of them trendy? choppy? Did you perform equally well in both environments? If you do well in trendy days, a couple of choppy days in a row can ravage your account very quickly. (and vice versa)
Trade with real money for a few years and all this will make so much more sense. Regardless the key is big winners/small losers.
You should try very hard to work out a plan for quitting the idea of trading. Until you succeed in getting a qutting plan really complete and believe it, you will be in trouble. At first, I thought I would suggest a drill for you to try. But I figured you wouldn't understand its meaning and then not do what you need to do. What is tough about figuring out a plan to quit is that you simply do not know enough to put such a plan together. I made two lists about you. One for trading and one for quitting. The quitting list is a lot shorter. Didn't several people tell you that you can't trade (Luckily, you never have so far) and that you are going about it totally the wrong way? There are two paths: one is to learn how to make money; the other is to learn how to learn to trade. If you came to our office and I had to assign a coach to you, I would have to pass because I wouldn't want to put such a burden on the coach. Give selling medicare products a shot. It is a rule based system where you just memorize some facts to tell other people so they can make a fair decision. As the years go by you can work your way up the sales line; there is little risk to manage. My guess is that you would be fair to old people and not screw them up because you could just sell the best product available.