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

schweiz said:
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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As said prior...
Once you know the ins and out of your platform and how you will use it, sim trading has no benefit.

Of course, if you are like the poster previous to you and you don't have a system or know how to read charts, you are no where ready for the activity of trading, in any format.
 
Practice is not simulation. The mechanics of enter and exiting, moving stops, determining position size need to be worked on of course to ingrain them. Simulating ... if only I bought here and sold here I would have made gazillions is fantasyland waste of time and energy.

A lot of top athletes like sports related video games. But they know the difference between a game and their actual practice.

I would think most traders in this profession know the difference as well.
 
Handle123 said:
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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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Disagree completely. Trading is better because it DOESN'T have any inventory, employees etc.

And many business people make terrible traders. Just like the rest of the population - at least as much as any other endeavor.
 
SunTrader said:
Trading is better because it DOESN'T have any inventory, employees etc.
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That's correct, but there are far more rich businessmen then traders. Trading is much more difficult, succesrate is far lower then for businessmen.
 
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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Were you making profit faster with your businesses than in starting trading?
 
I believe that nothing happens in vain and no matter how it sounds, it is also an experience. Of course it will not be a waste of time in the shuffle, I can not know what will happen tomorrow but so far there is a plus.
 
apo99 said:
trade 1 share if you have too or a insignificant amount. Paper trading doesn't take a lot of things into account
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Good points; not that i'm against Fed reserve paper notes [$$].

Paper trading can help+ learn levels
; not near close to real trading.:cool::cool:
 
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