It may take only a week to become profitable sim trading but it can take years to become profitable real trading.
Lol sim trading is extremely easy. Once I recognize the patterns I didn't even need a system. I just had to look at charts and I could've been profitable. But since I am a very resource person I do use tools. Nothing complicated just scanners and devising my own strats. I took $500 and turned it close to a million in just 800 trades on the sim. It was simple... Link on my sim results from an older post. https://i.imgur.com/FK8gmgN.jpg I am still not profitable trading real money yet. Like I said, take out all the psychological factors that make real trading difficult and it's a piece of cake. That's sim trading for you... Sim trading is overrated, it's nothing man. Nothing to be proud of or become overconfident about which I see in many amateur traders. I would say it's only 20% or less of what it takes to become a successful trader.
If the simulator results of a profitable trade method occurred with emotions too or with discretionary variables to achieve those results... Then if you automate the profitable trade method, you'll be missing a critical variable that made the trade method profitable...the emotions that impacted many of the trade decisions or missing discretionary decisions that may have been used in some of the trade decisions. Most profitable discretionary traders run into the above problem...they know the automated trading system will underperform the simulation trading or even the real money trading. wrbtrader
And more to the point, there is something we all lose track of when trading sim...The broker will simply not allow us to trade anymore. "You just lost 50% of your account equity today, and you want to go 50 deep on a NYMEX crude position? We won't let you, because you simply don't have the initial margin!" Most simulators will allow you to enter that trade, while the broker will not. Ergo, results you get in sim are FUBAR.