Experience on Simulator same as IRL?

[Shawna McDermott 0]

Hey all, my name is Shawna. I'm new to day trading and have been studying the art for about 3.5 months now, about 2 in the simulator. I'm starting to get to the point where most of my weeks are in the green - I'm currently on a 6 day streak of making a profit day trading in the simulator. Woo!

 

I'm curious - do more experienced day traders find that the simulator accurately reflects the experience of trading the market with real money? I'm aware that emotions will change once I transfer to real money, but I'm in this instance more curious about the fills you get on the simulator. Like I'm aware that if I buy 4000 stocks of PLUG on the simulator I'm not actually affecting the market in any real way because I'm not removing any actual equity from the field. However, if I was to trade with real money, I would be removing actual equity.

 

So, are you guys finding that the experience changes when you move to real money? Or do you find that the simulator largely reflects the numbers and experience that you have trading with live money - fills and levels are similar?  

 

Thanks!! So thrilled to be part of such a lovely and helpful community 🙂 Any perspective is helpful and greatly appreciated. 

[Thomas 13]

Welcome Shawna!

I went 3 months in SIM, and this is now my 4th week being live. My last 3 weeks in SIM before going live, I was green every day and with really good $'s. I had my life planned and was dreaming big. It felt awesome.

Going live is so much different (for me) and first two days I got lucky (bad behavior was rewarded), then the next week was down $500 by end of the week. Then last week I closed green, but barely... This week I'm break even as of today (yesterday I was 0/5 trades... but today I chipped away at losses).

If I did it again, I would have only spent a month in SIM to practice hotkeys and flow, and then I would have gone live starting month two with very, very low shares for each trade ($25 risk per trade) and do that for 2 months.

My new expectation ---I will likely be trading live for at least another 6-8 more months before I hope to get where I was in SIM before live (the video game experience). As of now, my heart can't take big shares and my goal is to just be green each week after commissions. Sad goal, I know... I had so much fun in SIM

So... you should go live as soon as you can, but start really small, protect your account and just try and be green each week. Or perhaps you are a just really good at this and will have a better experience than me. But only one way to find out 🙂

As for fills, I find a lot more slippage on entries and exits, and stop losses as well. Your trade log file looks so clean in SIM and is massive when trading live.

Edited August 12, 2020 by Thomas
answered actual question :)

[Billy Jenkins 1]

@Thomas Did you have to make any adjustments to your hotkeys in live trading vs sim trading to make sure your orders were getting filled?  Currently, I have my hot keys with an Ask +.05 Limit Order and in simulation, I have no problems ever getting my orders filled.  I've been wondering for awhile how well that would translate over to live trading.

[Gene 8]

On 8/21/2020 at 10:41 AM, Billy Jenkins said:

@Thomas Did you have to make any adjustments to your hotkeys in live trading vs sim trading to make sure your orders were getting filled?  Currently, I have my hot keys with an Ask +.05 Limit Order and in simulation, I have no problems ever getting my orders filled.  I've been wondering for awhile how well that would translate over to live trading.

I think Ask+.05 is very reasonable and seems to be the standard size that most traders and moderators recommend. I have not had any issues using Ask+.05 / Bid-.05 on any live orders.

[Brad 18]

It seems like live trading is harder for almost everyone. The reasons for that will be revealed when you start and will be a little different for everyone depending on a number of factors ranging from psychological things, relationship with money, to the technicals and the fills.

Some things you can do to make the transition easier are to make sim harder for yourself by making it as realistic as possible. Figure out what size you will be trading live and then trade that exact size in sim. You might be doing that already and you may want to consider reducing that size further. Also, be mindful of when to call it a day. In live trading, when you're down after a couple of trades it can be really hard to continue trading (with a clear head). You might want to be harder on yourself in sim and cut yourself off after a couple of losing trades after you imagine what that would be like with real dough on the line. That would probably mean taking more red days.

Another thing is most people tend to trade too big when they start live, but there is also such a thing as trading too small where you end up trying too hard to milk every trade because the positions are so small, so there is a balance to be struck. A lot of people end up back on sim after a while to try to sort out new issues they didn't know they had.

Best of luck!

[Dustin Dunn 6]

One thing I noticed in the DAS simulator is that I never got filled between the bid and ask with limit orders when I do all the time live.

Definitely use the same buying power in sim as you will have Live and utilize the risk management hotkeys and practice them.

[Bailey Nevener 83]

Shawna McDermott,

 

The reality is a lot of people that say trading live is different aren't being honest with their performance when they trade.

When they go live, sure enough, they can't 'scrub' that really bad day or say,

"Well I would have profited if I had followed XYZ rule, I'll just act like I threw a couple partials up there before it came back down to breakeven".

 

The market is no longer a silent participant.  It is now the judge.

Whenever people are trying to pursue any life goal it is the same way.  

Everyone that goes to the gym regularly thinks they have put in enough work to have that 'beach body'.

But the mirror and the Law of Conservation of Mass are keeping tabs on what is ACTUALLY happening.

 

When I went live with real money, the only significant thing that changed is there wasn't a reset button when everything blew up.

That's it.

My trading habits were the same, my hotkey errors were the same, and my performance was the same.

After a live trading day that was horrendous, I felt like I was going to have a heart attack.  I never experience this with the sim, sure.

What was I not honest about during my sim trading?

My trading habits sucked, my hotkey errors were plenty, and my performance was subpar.

 

If your simulator performance and live performance are significantly different, odds are, no, they aren't.

 

Edited August 27, 2020 by Bailey Nevener
Typos

[Matt Callaway 5]

20 hours ago, Bailey Nevener said:

Shawna McDermott,

 

The reality a lot of people that say trading live is different aren't being honest with their performance when they trade.

When they go live, sure enough, they can't 'scrub' that really bad day or say,

"Well I would have profited if I had followed XYZ rule, I'll just act like I threw a couple partials up there before it came back down to breakeven".

 

The market is no longer a silent participant.  It is now the judge.

Whenever people are trying to pursue any life goal it is the same way.  

Everyone that goes to the gym regularly thinks they have put in enough work to have that 'beach body'.

But the mirror and the Law of Conservation of Mass are keeping tabs on what is ACTUALLY happening.

 

When I went live with real money, the only significant thing that changed is there wasn't a reset button when everything blew up.

That's it.

My trading habits were the same, my hotkey errors were the same, and my performance was the same.

After a live trading da that was horrendous, I felt like I was going to have a heart attack.  I never experience this with the sim, sure.

What was I not honest about during my sim trading?

My trading habits sucked, my hotkey errors were plenty, and my performance was subpar.

 

If your simulator performance and live performance are significantly different, odds are, no, they aren't.

 

I concur 100%. Great analysis!