Order SIM for 3 months again or have a live account now

[Teruki 21]

Hi there,
My DAS simulator account will be up at the end of this coming week.
With the 2 week trial, I have practiced a little over 3 months now on SIM. 
I am not consistent (I know it would take long to become consistent), but I definitely learned a lot and am starting to have more green days.

Now I am thinking of spending more time only on SIM. I have heard many of the moderators or other successful traders say that they made a mistake of going live prematurely, that if they could go back they would spend more time on SIM. Thankfully I am not financially pressed and can spend more time on SIM.  That said, I hear there is a big difference between SIM and Live and becoming more proficient on SIM does not necessarily translate into Live. For example Thor says SIM became like a video game and he went live and started very small. I can actually see this problem...as much as I know it is not a best thing to do, I occasionally do things that I would not probably do on the live account. So a part of me thinks it may be a good idea to have a live account and see what it is like to do it live, then just spend most of the time on SIM.

I did not think much about it thinking I would switch to live when I feel right. But I realized with the 3 months discount for SIM, the next timing would be 3 months later (yes, I could start live in the middle but I would be paying overlapping fees). I am leaning toward to spending 3 more months only on SIM, but if anyone thinks I should have a live account and at least get prepared/ready etc. please give me your input. Also if you think I should definitely spend 3 more months only on SIM, also let me know 🙂           

Thanks!

Edited July 12, 2020 by Teruki

[Abiel 475]

You can go live and start very small, ONLY IF YOU HAVE AN EDGE on your trading, only if you already master a strategy or two with good expectancy.

If you go live small without an edge, proven strategies and discipline, you´ll start losing small, every day, building up frustration, anxiety, doubts about your skills and future as a trader, risking yourself to a hulk day. You will blame your "psychology", your "mindset", but I have news for you about "psychology": 

Said by a Trading Psychologist. So yes, trading small without an edge won't end giving you an edge.  Trading without an edge, thinking you have one, will cause serious damages to your self esteem and mindset, even you could become traumatized, and that will be very hard to overcome. 

There is a lot of self pressure and self deception to go live before one is ready, avoid that. Imagine if an airplane trainee ask to fly a 777 full of people because "sim is like a video game". If you don't have the edge, the discipline and the patience in sim, you won't have that either trading your hard earned money. 

[yauhk1 5]

On 7/12/2020 at 11:37 PM, Teruki said:

Hi there,
My DAS simulator account will be up at the end of this coming week.
With the 2 week trial, I have practiced a little over 3 months now on SIM. 
I am not consistent (I know it would take long to become consistent), but I definitely learned a lot and am starting to have more green days.

Now I am thinking of spending more time only on SIM. I have heard many of the moderators or other successful traders say that they made a mistake of going live prematurely, that if they could go back they would spend more time on SIM. Thankfully I am not financially pressed and can spend more time on SIM.  That said, I hear there is a big difference between SIM and Live and becoming more proficient on SIM does not necessarily translate into Live. For example Thor says SIM became like a video game and he went live and started very small. I can actually see this problem...as much as I know it is not a best thing to do, I occasionally do things that I would not probably do on the live account. So a part of me thinks it may be a good idea to have a live account and see what it is like to do it live, then just spend most of the time on SIM.

I did not think much about it thinking I would switch to live when I feel right. But I realized with the 3 months discount for SIM, the next timing would be 3 months later (yes, I could start live in the middle but I would be paying overlapping fees). I am leaning toward to spending 3 more months only on SIM, but if anyone thinks I should have a live account and at least get prepared/ready etc. please give me your input. Also if you think I should definitely spend 3 more months only on SIM, also let me know 🙂           

Thanks!

I have been in your situation 2 months ago and I did ordered 3 more months of sim. I would suggest you to do so too!  I see much better trading and consistency now than 2 months ago

[Teruki 21]

Thank you both for your replies.
I've made up my mind and go with 3 more months of SIM.
Hope by the end of it I have my edge!
 

Edited July 14, 2020 by Teruki

[hailchaser2 185]

I recently failed with my LIVE account, the biggest reason was not enough time in SIM. I don't just mean days trading in SIM, but how I traded in SIM. I wish I would have journaled and tracked performance just like a live account. It would have shown me that I did not have an edge. I went back to SIM for the month of June and treated it exactly like a live account. I only traded the setups I planned on trading live, I tracked my setups in TraderVue. I tracked my "R" per trade and per day. I only had 3 red days in June after changing my process. So I went back live in July, and only have one red day this month.

 

My advice would be to watch Peter's latest success webinar.

Some more advice, define your setups with a checklist of criteria, then start trading and tracking your progress. Once you find 2 or 3 setups you see well, and have good success with, switch to just trading those setups for a couple weeks. Once you prove to yourself in SIM that you actually do have an edge that works consistently, then make a plan to go live. I squandered over $4,000 because I "thought" I had an edge, but in reality, I was trading way too many strategies, and even trading things that just "looked" good. 

Another thing I wish I had done before trading live was to set up an automatic hard daily stop loss. I didn't have one the first few days, then I set it to $100, then I moved it down to $60....before I went back live in July, I moved it down to $30. I am only trading $10 risk per trade right now. So that gives me enough room to be wrong 3 times. 

This is what has worked for me, I know all traders are different, but be confident in your edge, and be able to back that up with data you keep in sim. Then when you do go live, if something isn't working, you can go back and look at your successful SIM trades and try to figure out what you are doing different.

You are in a great community.

Also watch the mastermind classes in the psychology center. They were also very helpful to me.

 

[Teruki 21]

Thank you so much for your detailed advice hailchaser2. I really appreciate the time and effort you took to write it.
Also thank you for sharing your experience with me/us. I definitely learned a lot from what you wrote.

"I "thought" I had an edge, but in reality, I was trading way too many strategies, and even trading things that just "looked" good.  "

To be honest this is something I still do and I am now trying to be more specific on my trades.
I think I have enough sample data of my trades to know what strategies I should focus on now.
I will work more on it  over the next 3 months and hopefully I am ready by the end of it.

Thank you again.

Edited July 14, 2020 by Teruki

[hailchaser2 185]

57 minutes ago, Teruki said:

Thank you so much for your detailed advice hailchaser2. I really appreciate the time and effort you took to write it.
Also thank you for sharing your experience with me/us. I definitely learned a lot from what you wrote.

"I "thought" I had an edge, but in reality, I was trading way too many strategies, and even trading things that just "looked" good.  "

To be honest this is something I still do and I am now trying to be more specific on my trades.
I think I have enough sample data of my trades to know what strategies I should focus now.
I will work more on it  over the next 3 months and hopefully I am ready by the end of it.

Thank you again.

You're welcome, I just hope to help as many new traders avoid the mistakes that I made, and hopefully save them some money.

When I tag my strategies in tradervue, I have one that is "No Strategy" , whenever I started tracking each setup with strategy tags, it really jumped off the page that "No Strategy" was really hurting my performance. So maybe add that to your strategy tags as well. Doing my journal entries it was difficult at first to be honest with myself, but when a trade doesn't fit into one of your strategies, it's really a "no setup" trade. I realized that, once I started journaling and labeling each trade.

Sounds like you are headed down the correct path, keep it up.

[Abiel 475]

7 hours ago, hailchaser2 said:

When I tag my strategies in tradervue, I have one that is "No Strategy" , whenever I started tracking each setup with strategy tags, it really jumped off the page that "No Strategy" was really hurting my performance.

Same here!