I was thinking of starting this thread and by the law of synchroneity I see this thread http://elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=23504&perpage=6&pagenumber=1 some excerpts from that thread and some though... thus we need Emotional Reaction to make it real. thus we need to develop a trust in a system. thus we need to keep it real. again...need to keep it real as real as posible hmm... we will try to fix this they key word is control accept loss, let your win run and take profit slowly are always good advice but how? read on...
as we can see paper trading lack some ingredients that real trade have like emotion, realistic fill, realistic size. Thus to make paper trading work it need emotion, it need fear, greed, happy and sad, indeed if a trade need to get emotional he should do it when p/t and learn how to control it. One way to do it is recall how you feel when you take on the real trade, how intense, anxious is your emotion, re-live it, magnify it ten fold make it real. The p/t should be restricted to market order with size you can afford, loss you can stand and profit target that reflect your real trade, re-live your past experience with real trade and carefully observe your emotion and reaction at the same time. I think this exercise will fix the faults of p/t. side note; -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Briefly outline the six steps of the Stanislavskian approach (or method) to acting? (1) The actor needs a trained body and voice, (2) He must know "stage technique", (3) He must be a skilled observer of life, and be able to re-call what he observes, (4) He must analyze the script, (5) He should become emotionally involved with the character he is creating while he is on stage, and (6) He must concentrate on the character he is creating, pushing everything else out of his mind. ..... 11. Why must an actor be a skilled observer of life? Because it is one of his primary research tools. He builds his character from these observations. 12. What is emotional recall? The actor's ability to recall an experience from his past, and re-live that experience on stage. The magic if? The actor, asking himself, "If I was this character, what would I do?" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------