Quote from BHOFFCO:
I think your comment on the interaction with the trader on the other side is completely wrong.
It is not over in a fraction of a second. The trader on the other side is who you are playing against.
You decision on what you are going to do is going to be based off what the other side is doing. This occurs until you get pushed out or the other side gives up.
Your chance of winning or losing a trade from a given entry point is not 50/50. There are often many chances to exit with a profit and many chances to lose in a given trade.
Most of the time when you are stopped out, it is on an extreme tick. You are not puking out of a position because you want to. You are getting out because you are being forced out do to fear, risk management parameters, or strategy.
It is the other side who is forcing you out thus they are driving the trade.
Brian,
1. take this with a grain of salt b/c Im a newb and 2. just trying to discuss not argue...
I feel you are being a bit pushy about getting your point across. Saying it is wrong to do this or that in trading seems somewhat naive or ignorant. Im sure there are plenty of traders that have spent time in SIM and gone live and either done well or reevaluted...gone back to SIM, fixed something, gone back to live so on and so on.
As you wrote in your article, "Profitable trading requires that you make split second decisions in REAL time based on changing conditions. If you have time to think about it, you are the retail (losing) trader. Please do not let the though enter your mind about using a predetermined stop and target while absorbing this article. That is complete garbage and has already been addressed in another article."
There are traders that are profitable...that have even posted in this thread that do exactly what you say not to do. So is your arguement based on your own experience?
Speaking from my own experience, I was live for awhile with a large enough account it would take a lot of really bad days to blow it up. However, I stopped live trading because I found holes in my trading and holes in my emotional psyche. While SIM trading will only may only marginally help with the emotional part, it can definitely shore up some of the trading holes.
I plan on going live somewhere in the near future and if something goes wrong or I find more holes, Im sure I will be back in the SIM. My recent troubles didn't blow up my account, and really I didn't even lose that big a % of the account. But I wasn't about to continue down the same road making the same mistakes without fixing some of them.
Lastly, per your words,"A good ass kicking with a $5K account will teach you more in one month than years of simulated trading."
Can you be a little more specific about this? Do you mean emotionally? Personally, I have no interest in losing $5k just to say I got my ass kicked and I learned something. Why can't you learn just as much and not blow up your account?
I guess the general point is there must be a happy medium...Im not saying spending years on SIM will lead to a great trader, but it seems all the traders that are great are constantly reevaluating their trading and their systems...and that may mean doing it in SIM for X amount of time.
