I have almost entirely been looking at just SPY for many years now. I like it because it's options move super good and it has much better volume than other stock options. Also, I found it to be REALLY informative when compared side-by-side with Apple and the DOW. I never felt the need to document the exact wins and losses and profits because I was winning at least 14 out of 15 trades and my gains were typically WAY WAY more than my losses. Around 1 out of every 5 would be at least 200% gains, probably about 1 out of 8 would be about 500% gains and most others would >50% gains. About once every 3 weeks or so I would get a >1000% gain. Approximately 1 out of 15 was a loss, and I would typically lose 30% to 50%. I'll admit that about 5%-10% of my paper trades had, a possible, a 1:1 risk to reward ratio, BUT my win rate took care of that and I invest a lot less in those situations. I'm aware of how I would trade in real life and my gains and losses would be very similar to what they are now but admittedly I know I would suffer a slight more loss.
Why not either execute a dozen paper trades or place some trivial sized trades just to operate the levers and get your results in actual money regardless of how small the P/L is. Or surrender.
I've already tried about 6 trivial sized trades and made a little money. It felt like getting shot to click and buy. I've also made another 2 attempted trades that were placed but missed being filled by one penny. I would have turned a $3,500 investment into $45,000 on one and also just yesterday I would have made $16,000 from a $15,000 investment. ACTUALLY, if I had reinstated my margin privileges I would have made a couple trades and made well over $68,500 from that $16,000. I switched to a cash account last year to make unlimited trades. I COULD make small trades and I REALLY probably should to get comfortable with trading. However, my pretend trades are treated almost exactly the same as they would be in real life and so I don't need to prove to myself that I can successfully trade.
We know you would be a successful trader if you could but the fact is that at this point in time you can't. Otherwise you would be. With that in mind, why do you mess with it at all?
Because after thousands of "pretend" trades with countless stunningly accurate predictions and MASSIVE regular gains and few losses - I can make more in one month than most make in several years working at factories. Because I've tried to learn programming, high level math, two extra languages, and 3d animation and my mind wouldn't let me excel beyond a point. Stock prediction has been something that I can actually still successfully do. Also, I don't have insurmountable problems getting in my way, I have many little pathetic problems getting in my way(e.g. extreme difficulty paying attention even 5 minutes). Those little problems become huge because of my racing thoughts, difficulty paying attention, foggy mind, fear, and bad memory. If they were insurmountable then I'd give up, but these are stupid little problems. My predicament is outrageous!
That may be true but I'm not sure how. One possible problem would be if liquidity usually isn't good enough to allow instant buys or sells at limit prices on SPY options. That would be a problem. I don't know if that's true or not because I've no experience. So, ACTUAL lack of liquidity could have a considerable negative impact on my trades. I don't know what other problems there'd be for me? I make precise buy and sell decisions and I watch closely for any ambiguity in my decisions. If I see a specific current price and click "buy" at that price then I'd guess I'd fill at that price, and the same goes for "sell". Buying or selling 1 penny above or below tops and bottoms shouldn't effect me too awful much tbh.
I'll prove you wrong once I make one or two big profits using my whole account, and once I get rid of my foggy mind and ADD and racing thoughts. Then I'll reduce my trade size and have confidence to trade every day. I could go the small fraction of my account path but that comes with some problems. One problem is that I'm running out of time.
I don't get it ? I'm not a very educated trader because my mind was always too foggy to excel, and yet I've always been able to visualize minutes or hours of the future of a stock chart. I sought and found as many little clues as possible to predict stock patterns that my foggy mind could still manage. I was doing that from the beginning even with only a tiny monitor and 4 core computer. It taxed my brain terribly but I could still do it. EXPERT traders can't do that ? Hmmmm, Ok...