Journaling Live/Sim

[BrandonB 4]

Hey BBT,

 

I've been live now for a few months on occasion I will jump into a Sim trade. Would it make sense to mix my Live & Sim trades in the same journal? I currently pull my .csv daily from TWS that adds in my coms. Would mixing skew my data?

 

Thank You!

[Brad 18]

I would say NO, don't mix them. That is likely to be a headache and it will make it hard to interpret your data. I have been using Tradervue for quite a while and have more than one account for different purposes: one for live trading, one for sim, and one for occasional swing trades.  Also, with Tradervue you can track your performance over months and years and sim trades would just mess that up.

Even when keeping a journal in OneNote or a similar program, I think it makes sense to keep them separate because live and sim are different experiences and can be quite different psychologically.

[BrandonB 4]

Thanks, I currently use TV to log all of my trades, I think for my sims I'll add them to OneNote to prevent skewing my data.

 

Thank You!

[KellsTrevor 0]

Another question to add, similar...

I am live now for a little over a month.  I will drop to sim every now an then to "get my trade on" this is trading for the entertainment of it.  I am restricted in live, as I don't really have any playbook 30-40 min past open.  But I fear that dropping to sim to play might form bad habits.  At the same time, it is good for learning...  I just can't decide if the pros out weigh the cons.  Perhaps I should only use sim to specifically test a strategy, and not use it to "play".

 

It does scratch the itch to be doing trades, which in live could be very damaging to my capital.  😉