Is paper trading a waste of time or does it yield benefits?

Overnight said:
I'm going to go to my bloody grave screaming this I guess...

You wanna' give it a shot? Start with 1 contract on MGC! Why is this such a difficult concept? You have gotten into trading...It is a business.. Some days you lose money, some days you make money.

Don't look at MGC's low volume and think you can 't do anything with meaning.

In what other market can you get in and out with a $1 per tick move, with fair volume? Don't try to arb the thing with the big brother of GC, it will never work. Yer retail. Juts use it to try some stuff. Oi!
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Agree, 100%.

Do whatever is needed to trade live. It doesn't matter if it's a single-digit-odd-lot of stock, 1 option contract, MGC, or one of the micro currency futures contracts... Trade live!

Adding just a small amount of skin to the game is likely to bring emotional and other personal behavioral traits to the surface... Some of which "believed" by the trader to exist, may not, and vice-versa.

Furthermore, learning about ACTUAL commissions, fees, margins, buying power, time, as it relates to REAL-TIME skin in the game can be eye-opening by itself, and certainly in understanding broker/FCM features and policies, which indeed do differ. Add a few REAL-TIME facts about order-types, BE, and end-of-day accounting, and you gain a higher level of education, more conducive to a trading business on a professional footing.
 
Laissez Faire said:
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A more discretionary approach allows for interpretation and real time analysis, i.e., "The market looks weak. I think it's going down. No wait - maybe it's actually going up."
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Goes both ways. Traders often out-think their automated strat too.

Just because it is coded doesn't make it immune to the trader's own failings.
 
I've also read that it doesn't help many people because people don't treat it too seriously.

I did when I did.
I actually used paper, a notebook. I paper traded so much and took so many notes I had to buy a 2nd notebook.

I found writing much better than doing it digitally.

I'd write notes between each trade. My mind frame, my reasons for the trade, why I thought it'd go in a particular direction.

I'd draw patterns, arrows etc.

It helped massively.
When I calculated my profits and loses for the day, I'd realize how much money I saved by screwing up on paper.

I vowed to not return trading real money until I could regularly profit on paper. I was surprised how long it took.

Still today, I use it to write my notes on my current trades, justification, why it went well, or poorly.
Write reminders, trade priorities, tips for future trades, etc.

Always Be Learning
 
Paper trading can be both good and bad. Good as it develops habits of conforming to your rules of owning a business to produce profits, and it helps to generate questions in which you must formulate answers. Bad is when you don't have a well defined Trading Plan and you wing it, it will ingrain bad habits which make this business so much harder to correct bad habits.

Always remember this is a business, and if business runs out of money, you no longer have a business, then you going to have to go find a job working for someone else's business and you are a slave again. Each trade you take you write it down in your journals and answers of why you took trade.
 
helpme_please said:
I would like to ask the elitetraders here if they make use of paper trading to improve their trading/investment performance.

Is it a waste of time or are there indeed benefits from paper trading? Interactive Brokers provide a good paper trading platform. If it is really a waste of time as I have read from feedback of some folks here, why would IB spend so much resources building a paper trading platform?

If you have tried paper trading and have enjoyed some benefits, please share your experience. I will prefer to hear from those who have actually tried it rather than those jump to conclusions without trying. Thank you.
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ET is the Mecca for Paper Trading, some of the Iconic Paper Traders in the biz post here.. follow the ES Journal for prime Paper trading set ups. You can’t help but print money.
 
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I remember my first experience with trading. Did not know what was a trendline, trend, indicators,etc. I was buying and selling just by looking at the quotes: if it shows green a lot "buy", if it shows red a lot "sell". Mind you this was a few thousand dollars of my money in a live account trading forex in 2008. How I wish I had known of paper trading back then.
 
tiddlywinks said:
Sim trading is not close to comparable. Trade live!!

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2018/11/21/united-airlines-pilot-training-behind-the-scenes.html
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In almost all professions you need to take an education first.
Nobody can start immediately as a doctor, lawyer, carpenter, plumber...
Before you get a driver's license you need to take practice.

Sim trading gets you the basic education and the first insights in what trading is.

As no education is like reality, nor is sim.

The most stupid thing you can do is start to trade live without doing sim first. Except if you are a genius. And apparently there are quite a few (not to say the majority) of these supermen on ET. That's why it is called ELITE trader probably.
 
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SunTrader said:
Prior to getting into trading two decades ago I started and sold two businesses. Although there were trial and error periods nothing about them was practice.
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I have started and sold businesses as well, the entire times I worked them was practicing, you constantly seeing what works best, who are best customers, best times to contact people, whether homeowners or wholesale, but we all call it different names and tackle different ways.
But trading is worst than 99% of the businesses as it does involve inventory nor a service when starting out, it is you and you alone, and if you have the opportunity to see if you have abilities to try for free, all the better.

Glad you been trading for two decades, I think business people have better edges.
 
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