I'm a pretty heavy user of trading sim, and there only seems to be a bit of scattered info on it in the forums so I thought I'd post a detailed thread here along with some recent improvements they've done. For those who don't know, TradingSim (www.tradingsim.com) is a dedicated replay paper trading platform that runs in the browser. One can choose any date, setup a watchlist and playback stock data. There are buttons for play, pause, step to next candle, speed up, slow down etc. You can set your account size, buy, sell, short, limit and stop orders are all there. The advantages of using such a platform: Trade outside of market hours Drastically increase the amount of practice trading for a given time of day (for instance the open) Trade in different market conditions Use it as a research tool to study historical data, refine patterns and strategies, etc. One of the main drawbacks that people have commented here on the forums here is that it does not have pre-market and post market. They have since added this a little while ago. I'd say the only key thing that's still missing is level 2, although they do have order flow; and that also shows the current spread. There is obviously no premarket gapper scanner or anything like that. For trading practice I simply look up the respective recap from Andrew on youtube in order to get a watchlist. I spent quite some effort getting this das-like, and I'm relatively happy with the result. Take a look for yourself, and note that my DAS setup is slightly different than Andrews (I use green candles, different thickness MAs). Like DAS, there are a lot of options, it takes a little while to find everything you need. One rather critical option that vastly improved it for me was the 'Scale series only' under the 'Scale' of the chart settings. This stops the chart zooming out to fit the 50 and 200 SMA when they are out of screen. Just like DAS you can mark your charts with relevant levels from the premaket or daily, levels can be moved across charts via one by one via a copy-paste type functionality, but given the amount of clicking involved it's just as fast to draw them again. Some of the drawbacks the platform still has: Calculation of the VWAP in the pre-market is incorrect (I am currently in contact with them about this) No level 2 Hotkey functionality is a bit weak compared to DAS For active trades, it shows your average price on the chart, as well as relevant limit/stop orders, which is pretty cool, however once a trade is closed, there are no triangles to show you your orders. This makes it difficult for reviewing trades. This also facilitates overtrading or scaling out too quickly in my mind as you can't see the array of triangles you are leaving behind. During my usage of the platform I have found some bugs or oddities and sent them feedback. They have been fairly responsive about addressing all the feedback I have sent them, and a number of things have been fixed thus far. A word to pricing and competition. I tried both NinjaTrader and ThinkorSwin in the beginning, both of which are free. Ninja trader didn't work at all, replay only seemed to work for futures and forex. ThinkorSwim is also free but requires an ameritrade TD account. Based on feedback I heard from others from the community that it was rather clunky and not really usable, I didn't bother trying it out. TradingSim is $300 a year, and they offer a 10 day trial. Compared to the cost of DAS I personally think this is totally reasonable, particularly for people with jobs, or in other time zones who need to practice out of market hours. To conclude I want to emphasize that whilst I am happy with using this software, it is clearly no replacement for the DAS trader simulator with real time data and participating in the chat. Personally, I find I take tradingsim less seriously than the DAS sim, something about the fact the things are not happening real time really takes the pressure off. Therefore it is essential to participate in the market daily to practice in realtime market conditions, and on the platform you will go live with. I'd be interested to here from other members using tradingsim and what they think. Anything to add or any questions?

Mike, It all comes down to position sizing. You need to find that level that you can brush off the losses. It doesn't matter if it's 5, 10, 20, or 100 (or more) dollars. Find that HONEST level. Next, you need to make sure that your max loss is an honest amount as well. So, allow yourself 3 losses in a row all getting stopped out and add it up. If that means that 30 dollars is your max loss of the day, so be it! Once you start following your rules, you can slowly start to increase your share size. I lost a LOT of money when I first started trading (over 30,000). Once I got serious about educating myself and becoming a better trader (and no longer worrying about making money), I started to actually consistently make money. After completing my 3 months or so in SIM (or whatever it takes to where you are green at the end of the month), I switched back to real. I started trading with 25, 50, and 100 shares depending on the stock. I allowed myself only to lose 10 dollars per trade. If I hit 30 dollars loss on the day, I was done. Slowly but surely, I stopped having max loss days. Then, I started having green weeks. Every week I finished green, I increased my share size by 25 percent. After 4 months of this, I found my level I felt comfortable trading (my max share size is 2000 shares w/200 dollars max risk per trade. I don't often take trades with this many shares, but I will allow myself to do it if I get a really good setup and entry). I haven't had a red week in 5 months. I haven't had a red day in 24 days. But, whats more important than the consistent green is HONORING your rules regarding loss. I could have 100 days green in a row and it wouldn't matter if I were to allow myself to lose 10,000 dollars because I let something run against me indefinitely. So, find your comfortable loss. Stick with it. Be a robot. Stop thinking things will turn around. You will never be right 100 percent of the time. It's statistically impossible.

Great weekly recap Mike! Fully agree with your comment noted above. Focus solely on the process and the money will work itself out.

Third weekly recap of the third month of live trading. Weekly Analysis of trading The first couple days of the week were good, I stayed trading only within my edge. Wednesday is when things went wrong. Instead of focusing on developing my Trading Skills, I let the fact that I missed an entry on a stock I had dropped off my watch list after 10 minutes effect the way I traded. The other two stocks I kept on my list didn't give me an entry, so I was ready to call it a day and not trade, but I looked back at $JWD and saw the great 15 Min ORB that gave a $1.00 move over 10 minutes. That right there was the mistake, I shifted my focus from developing my trading skills to the money I could have made. I got emotional walked away from the computer and once I came back, I noticed another stock moving, so I took an entry. Luckily I was smart enough to realize the stupidity of this mistake and I got out. Right after my exit, boom stock went against me bad. The next day I was fine, but a little hesitate on taking an entry and missed another great move. At least I learned from the previous day and walked away. Then came Friday, I was set and ready; however, I did not have myself in the right mindset as I was more focused on not missing an entry so I would not leave any money on the table. This caused me to take an early entry, I got stopped out and then I went back to my old ways of chasing the stock and getting stopped out three times, which resulted in hitting my daily stop loss. The biggest take away from Friday after I ended my day was that even though I hit my max loss, I was not upset with the money I lost, I was disappointed in the way I traded. It was encouraging to see that my mind has started to shift away from the money to the trading skills. I now just need to keep reinforcing this belief by focusing on trading skills instead of the money I lost, made, or could have made. Weekly Overall Self Rating: Disappointed in myself, but looking forward to bouncing back next week. Daily Goal Hit – 2 of 5 Daily Max Loss – 1 of 5 Goals for the month progress 1. Traded outside my edge 5 times this week. 2. Kept Share size the same. (Possibly looking to change how I take shares after listening to Peter D. and Robert H. videos on risk management and Share sizing.) 3. Met 2:1 ratio and above a 60% average win rate Risk Controls 1. Did not trigger Max Loss control all month 2. I did not hit Max Share traded in a day. Trading Methodology 1. Same thing as last time I increased share size, I have had a couple bad trading days in a row. 2. GGRRR

UPDATE: Still looking good on re-buying from that zone. I will wait form some pullback to buy more at around 0.71-0.715. Note: buying from this area right now is purely based on price action (imagine the sellers who sold on that drop are all out for loss). Buy decision is NOT based on any COT data as I am patiently waiting for this government shut down to end. The big players are running around with their orders with no one watching their orders!