What instruments are you trading? If futures, you can trade micro-futures with real money to get a feel for the psychology of trading real money.
i trade 1 point range bars so the action is fast and furious but the risk is low and you have precision control. even one minute bars seem like an eternity to me. but the most successful system i know uses 135 minute bars so there is something for everyone when it comes to trading. get with something and master it.
small cap low float stocks, the strategy I use is highly dependent on volatile panic moves. I only like to trade the open all the way up to 11 am and then the last two hours of the close 2pm-4pm. This is where all the action is at least based on my observations. After 11 and all the way to 2 is the lull time to me....all the action dies, during this time i just like to sit back and watch everything that is going on or run screeners.
Open is the most volatile sometimes closing is, good liquidity except for today haha. Stay out of the lower time frames if your starting out. I got in the trap of trading 1 min and 5 min candles when scalping, then I moved over to only DOM and I have to say it's a lot better for scalping Market Making. I leave my chart at 15 so I can put the market into perspective as I feel like the lower time frames are noisy and you will for sure be picked off by a HFT and then eaten for breakfast afterwards. Stick to higher time frames and work your way down to try your best fit. Wish you the best man. There's plenty of opportunity in the markets just remember her name is Risk, never forget that. As far as books go read Trading in the Zone by Mark Douglas, it's good if your an athlete or have former experience that way you don't give up if you get beat down. And yes profitable trading is boring trading, stick to a plan and execute it everyday. Have a bad day but followed your plan it's okay do something nice for yourself. You'll condition yourself everyday and trading in the end is a bunch of good habits with an edge. Get an edge.
For me, smaller the timeframe, risk exceeds targets in scalping have greatest risk, too expensive to have meaningful hedges, it might actually cost more than targets. So generally at best, risk equals targets, whereas trade boring weekly bar charts, reward to risk is totally more to my liking, risk quite a bit smaller and reward much larger, YES, so boring, you want "action"? Try this:
I studied books for 30 years......I lost. I studied charts for a few days and market movements and won......found how markets move. I will tell you how to find the best teacher in the world...…….look in the mirror.
no book and no one will teach you the basic structure of price movement....how price moves and why. trading is buy low sell high. no book will tell you that. they will give you some bullshit about indicators or strategies. I read books for 30 years saw videos.... not a single one showed me: this is low and this is high. I found out myself without that knowledge you may as well burn your money
most traders use some gimmick and decide market is going up or down. they have already decided direction of market movement. we are used to looking forward and taking action. no one looks back …...that is why they lose. what happened earlier-how strong was the selling or buying- is critical in knowing what will happen now. just because the selling was overcome does not mean the market is free to move up......this is a very common mistake traders make. Higher prices make it more attractive to sell and they will happily sell more aggressively just as lower prices make buyers more aggressive do not analyse charts-this is what everyone will teach you. find out why the charts happen. then you will be the best trader in the world