When I hear people saying that they want to papertrade, what they are really telling me is they are afraid to lose money, and you can't trade if you are afraid to lose money. Don't doubt me.
Imagine that you'd risk 10 cents for every trade and have 10 losing trades in a row. Would it be a psychological problem?
This question lacks important information. What is the strategy designed to do? Is it designed to have a lot of small loses that are outpaced by a few large gains? Or is it, a 50-50 expectation between losers and winners? Or it could be that you have a lot of small winners, with the occasional large loser, but the system is still profitable?
With that said, that this scenario would piss me off significantly more if it was in a cash account versus a paper trading account.
You probably mean $128k - first quarter you are risking your initially planned $1k, so it's 2^(8-1). In real life, of course, it's not gonna happen. First, you not going to double it overnight, but smoothly grow it from test sizing to the desired capacity. Most strategies with a Sharpe of 2 or over will get there very quickly.
Yeah, I was off by a power of 2. Who claimed that my doubling rate was steadfast and anyone trying to adopt this strategy would have to double it overnight? If you are looking for hard rules to trading, you will not be successful.
The only real rule is that you have to find a strategy that fits you and your personality.
Don't expect someone else to hand you the Holy Grail.
Take other peoples advice, strategies, and philosophies of the market into consideration. Adopt, tinker, or disgard as you see fit.
Believe me, I have tried plenty of ideas. A lot I came up with, others that I found from others, and the majority of them fail to produce returns that are worthwhile.
My method, of starting small and ramping up has treated me well in testing various strategies. If a trading method fails when you are trading small lots, there is no way it will scale up to become successful.