Everyone has their own feeling about simulator and I'd like to offer you mine. Being profitable can take several years. I don't see any reason why one has to lose real money during this time. If one can't trade profitably on simulator then there is no way they can trade profitably with real money. Now note the converse isn't true. If one can trade profitably on sim that doesn't mean they can trade profitably with real money. Once you get to the real money stage you run into the psychological issues. I feel it's best to work out the edge & prove it before dealing with the psychological issues. What I see in your trades is that you're dealing with several problems at once and that's going to be very difficult. You're dealing with psychological issues (when you say "stupid trade") and you're working on proving your edge. Why not prove your edge on sim and when profitable for a month, you can try real money? It's much easier to fix a psychological issue when you have a proven edge. If I gave you a button and every time you pushed it you have a 50% of winning $2 and a 50% of losing $1. Would you have psychology issues pushing the button? If it were me I'd be pushing it as fast as I could and not miss a second. That's how trading should be. Once you define your setup & prove it has an edge, you trade it over and over.
Pardon me cunparis, for chopping up your post, it's all good. Quiper Save your ca$h, turn on the Sim, I sense a lot of wisdom in cunparis's post. I have done every thing possible to make my trading career as difficult as it could be. The funny thing is, I had no idea I was doing it! It's hard to learn from others' mistakes, but if you have an open mind, then maybe , maybe, maybe you won't have to unlearn as many bad habits as I.
Thank you cunparis, You are totally right. I have done the trip SIM --> Real money --> SIM etc several times in the past and this is just the best time I have to do it again. The best is I have now learned so much during the past several months from my live trading that I have lots of ideas what to train and polish on my strategies. I have executed 224 live trades in my actual live trading run so there is also plenty information in my own journal with screenshot etc I have to go over. I will take the next week off trading and will go for a small holiday, but after my holiday I will start to publish sim trades here and track my progress. I will not go live again until I define more my trade management after entry (which is biggest weakness right know I feel) and of course till I will be SIM consistently profitable over some period of time. Thank you once more for your feedback. Quiper