Comparison to a "practice" game vs a "real" game is bs. A professional (or wannabee pro) athlete who doesn't possess or loses the competitive mindset is destined to fail. "Practice" does not change that. Practice games and real games are the same in this regard. Additionally, injury and all the consequences can occur during practice. Sports practice makes one stronger, faster, better... a necessity for completing a season and advancing a career. A "winning" mindset exists or does not. Sim Trading and real trading are not the same. No injury is possible with sim. No real-life consequences are possible with sim. No "winning" mindset is needed with sim. Once you know how your platform expects it's input, building up the strength of your mouse finger has no value. Typing faster than your keyboard can process likely has some value, although most value would be in a non-trading usage. Price, as a numeric value doesn't matter either once you know how your platform expects it's instructions... You are attempting to buy or attempting to sell, based on a playbook you have designed. There are order types. In football, a play is determined in the huddle. When the team is positioned on field, the QB can change the play through an audible. Audible or not, whether everyone gets the memo or not, the play, the game, continues. Bottom line: No injury is possible with sim trading. No real-life consequences are possible with sim trading. No "winning" mindset is needed with sim trading.
SIM: Masturbating dry. Rael Money: Getting laid with a partner of your choice (trying to be PC here) Managing Money: OPP.
With trading, sim is important for noobs, it's a bit like trainer wheels, noobs have no clue about trading and sim will probably teach them that "whoa, this aint easy" so long as they are realistic with how they use sim. When I started with using Amibroker I discovered that canned indicators didn't work, so then began creating my own indicators. My own indicators didn't work, sim back testing showed that. With sim I could experiment without losing money and I spents some years experimenting looking for the holy grail of indicators. While using sim I was also at times trading with real money and losing. When I decided to go automation, that too failed for me, but I was learning all the time some important lessons in how the market operates. I no longer back test, no longer sim, but those years taught me lessons which is difficult to explain, but I suppose lots of very small things which add to a larger picture.
You must be pissed about the Tide...ROFLMAO..well Tiddlywinks get ready for another Tide Championship...LOL
After you automate, does your SIM and REAL results converge? Another question sir, what platform did you use to automate?
Sim and Real are identical. If they would not be, it would be a big red flag for me. The slight difference is that some real trades exhibit small slippage when compared to sim. The road to automation is: 1) Developing and backtesting 2) Running Live on sim account 3) Trading Live Step 1 has many dangers of introducing bugs because you know what happened. This is why Step 2 is crucial. I use NinjaTrader.
update: after being in SIM for 3 weeks and regrouping myself, I was back to real $ trading today. I executed just as good as SIM, actually even better. What I am most proud of VS. SIM is the trades I did NOT TAKE. I know it is only one day, but this was such a great thing for my confidence.