Paper Trading – Serious or Not?
One of my students posted this in my forum which prompted me to share something I taught in the most recent Malaysian Tutorial.
… I feel that although taking paper trade seriously in cutting losses and being discipline in your trading plan, it lacks the stress and pressure when I used to do actual trade in Forex. It will be a challenge to bring the paper trade to the actual warfront of doing the live trading in scalping. The psychology must be strong and the discipline must be in place and definitely the money that you do not need and affordable to lose to prevent clouding your mind with unnecessary burden.
To a certain extent, This student is correct. But as with most people with the same thinking, they are missing out the main point.
A kid is taken from life and sent to military school. There, he learns to take orders and in some cases give orders, he is trained to be disciplined, orderly and organized, he is drilled and drilled, and then drilled some more, he goes through the same training of reaction and response over and over and over again, he practices reflex action and counter-active action repeatedly, … it would seem like a total waste of the tax payers’ monies to make these kids do the same thing everyday, over and over again. It becomes mundane, repetitive and absolutely boring and senseless.
Then war comes to this soldier’s front door. He and the other troopers hit the beach. The bullets start flying, the bombs start blowing up, the metal meets the meat.
Without thinking, the soldier knows what to do. His training and discipline takes over. He doesn’t think about what he has to do … he knows what to do. He doesn’t think about how he feels … he reacts and responds. He doesn’t run from the fight … his drilling and reflexes put him right into the fight.
The training takes over. This is where all those hours of drilling and training pay off. The soldier’s life depends on it. All victory in war depends on this.
Paper trading, when practiced in all seriousness, is meant to do just that.
It is a precious experience from which the skill is derived. This is the skill that will keep you alive when the metal meets the meat – real money trading.
When that happens, the training takes over, you work without considering your emotions and you do what needs to be done.
You work with your head and not your heart.
If you are not achieving this with your paper trades, then you are not being serious about your training. If you are not serious about your training, you are likely to get killed in battle.
Happy Hunting … or are you going to allow yourself to be the hunted?
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