It is not about testing your method (discretionary); it is about SOP. You have no skills and you do not "get it".
Don advises you to go back to standard blah blah ....; you have NO standard anything.
Someone posted a list: enter, exit stop. Maybe he meant enter, stop , exit....who cares.....
You do not know how to set up a screen, monitor a screen if you had one set up, be able to sense signals, be able to compare signals with standard blah blah, use your trading account screen display. etc, etc.....
If you did know any of the above you would not be chatting about how you think what you have been doing actually works.
You post stuff about your space and your space is very different than a trader's space.
To say that you are a discretionary paper trader is an unusual possibility. Think for a moment.......do you know how a discretionary system is backtested?..... Think how forward testing a discretionary system would work based upon discretionary back testing.......
Do you get the picture that the whole above paragraph has no answers?
Somehow you have reead books. done this or that and you have woven a path to paper trading using a discretionry plan? approach? something? You proceeded to evaluate it based upon collected data that you chose to collect and measure in the manner you picked to do measurements. This is all you doing your thing in your space.
So the alternatives? The paths you chose not to take that are in the books and the posts?
You are saying that as the trading day goes by you are always at choice as what to do. And, and as such, you get stats on your results that are different (better) than people who have narrow specific SOP's that are less profitable.
For your experience level (none as has been pointed out to you) probably the first step (the next step) would be to rename what you think you are doing and see if you can define what you think you ar doing.
As has been pointed out to you, you are learning a lot about not being in the market as you are watching some aspects of the market that may or may not be important for making money.
When will you get to a place to be able to set up your computer for watching the markets? Watching to be able to see what is required to make money. Not soon.
When will you develop a sufficient set of signals to be able to do even one kind of frquently occurring money making trade? That will come after you get your computer set up to be able to even see signals. Look at the list of signals you have posted in this thread.
Your statements on how money manaegment affects your discretionary trading are lacking in a few aspects. Actually all aspects are lacking.
When a person has a screen set up and has a set of signals in mind, he reaches the beginning point and basic starting point for figuring out how to work with the market to take money out of it. His vaste knowledge of how the market works is where the "standard blah blah..." comes from.
If oyu haven't gotten the screen and signals straight, then composing the discretionary system to deal, based upon the beliefs and knowledge youhave gained by repeated experiences is goiong to be very shallow. It may be that you have not as yet gained any knowledge and beliefs from experience. generally one of the first beliefs that a person gets it to know to focus on specifics. And the specifiics are far apart and few indeed at the beginning.
Knowing that you know little is very hard to find out for you.
Some multimillionaire who has hundreds and hundreds of clients paying him money every day o the week says to you ..............
and you reply should I do this next?
In effect, you were told that you do not know anything about how the market works and to consider getting oriented to Standard blah blah.....
Paper Trading VS the Real Deal........
If you go somewhere to look at the Real Deal....or if someone takes you to a place to look at the Real Deal.........you will not come up with the idea of paper trading and especially not using discretionary trading as the approach on paper trading.
Go to a workshop and hope to meet another attendee who is not papaer trading. From that point on, see if that person can help you find to highway you need to begin to travel.
I can empathize with those that blow out real accounts, so I learned that much from it at least. I heartily disagree with anybody that says simulation is not worth it after that experience.