okay. After going back to SIM. Trading for a month and getting back my confidence I am ready to start real trading again next week.
Of course in SIM. I am killing it. Of course this week I would have made big profits.
But of course real money results are never as easy as when it’s not for real.
There’s tons of articles on this. Obviously it’s the emotions of real money at risk.
My first goal as I go back I to real trading is not to make money. My number one goal is to execute my strategy to plan. No deviations. I want to be robotic.
I've seen a a lot of traders that did well in simulate trading (trade journals here are litter with them) and than do
poorly in real money trading because they would
watch their
profit/loss screen instead of minimizing that screen to minimize the impact of being sucked into emotional trading especially when volatility shows up.
Using stop protection, limit orders and such gives
some protection against emotional trading that tends to show up in real money trading instead of watching the profit/loss screen. Yet, trade experience in conditions like this of high volatility is the key because the trader will know what to expect, how to adapt and what trade approach to use in trading conditions like this past week.
As for your reference to
"this week I would have made big profits"...this week is
unsual volatility. Do not let it fool you into thinking its going to last a long time...you'll know when its gone...you will
not see those big profits and/or it will take you a lot longer to catch those big profits.
Its common to see traders jump into the markets during high volatility market conditions because they see all the news reports about the big losses along with the big gains and they believe they can outsmart the market to be on the side of the big gains.
Only a few will make big dollars during these types of unusual volatility conditions. In comparison, most will just blow up or start changing their trade approach as if they do not want to miss out on those
big profits. Reality, it usually just results in poor trading because that changed approach has
not been properly backtest for high volatility trading conditions.
The mind plays a lot of games when real money numbers start moving at an extreme fast pace in the profit/loss screen. Sometimes its just best to walk away from the screen...go take a long walk and do other activities not associated with the markets until calm returns.
wrbtrader
