Hey everyone,

I'm a newbie who has been sim trading for more than a year with some mixed results. I haven't seen the results yet that I'd like to see before going live, but I'm still pushing through it. It's definitely been a long journey with lots of ups and downs - something I'm sure many of you can recall. Thought it would be cool if some experienced traders can share their thoughts on how being persistent has helped them towards progressing as a trader.

Thanks a lot, and looking forward to hear what y'all got to say!

Experience doesn't guarantee success in trading. Consistency often comes at the cost of robustness. Examples might be shorting the VIX was consistently profitable until it wasn't or a system trader benefits from having a well-defined model to trade but that comes at cost of having a more complete model.

Now, most traders have more success initially then later because they are more focused, more concentrated, etc. So, if you are not having success and you are one year into it: that would be a flag to me. Right, we can say for sure that if you are persistent then you have a chance to become consistent but if you are not persistent there is no chance.

However, persistence might be prerequisite but it is not sufficient because all experience is not equal. You can study the markets for 5-10 years but if you aren't developing your ideas, aren't practicing, aren't getting better, then you might only have gained 1-2 years of effective experience. This is very key. You must identify and work to fix your issues. The work must be very concentrated and very intensive.

You have to be able to both learn from your failures and properly discount them. For example, recently in various tryout accounts my equity curve is going straight down. However, I know my predictions are still usually on target. I know most my entries are correlating with great entries. There is information in my losses but I can discount any extrapolation. Some of my losses were caused by system trades. The information about those losses is going to be different then from my discretionary losses.

You also need some realistic objectives. Most professional futures traders can only return 50% to say 150% while keeping drawdowns reasonable 50% or less. Obviously, many of us want to get to a higher level but that sort of success, the kind required to get funding from most tryouts, is not typical nor well documented.

I think, also, if you don't have systems and you are only day trading then having to be on a really tight schedule is both really critical and very difficult to maintain over the long term because of "life". I think having some sort of accountability is likely to help. If you can start tracking some of your results on your blog or via a tracking service or whatever will help with that. As well, you need to start developing systems as that will help in the long run.

Right, I'd recommend you stay on the sim until you get some profitability. But, you need to get off the sim and get some live trades in as soon as you demonstrate some competency. Most traders will progress faster with live training. For most traders, I'd recommend no more then 3 months in simulator. Also, I recommend that you start developing some system development and backtesting proficiency.

I plan to start using the market replay more in my work too to focus in on the 1-2 hours of trading that provide the best opportunity.

tpredictor 

However, persistence might be prerequisite but it is not sufficient because all experience is not equal. You can study the markets for 5-10 years but if you aren't developing your ideas, aren't practicing, aren't getting better, then you might only have gained 1-2 years of effective experience. This is very key. You must identify and work to fix your issues. The work must be very concentrated and very intensive. You also need some realistic objectives. Most professional futures traders can only return 50% to say 150% while keeping drawdowns reasonable 50% or less. Obviously, many of us want to get to a higher level but that sort of success, the kind required to get funding from most tryouts, is not typical nor well documented.

You mentioned some really insightful things in that post! I totally agree with you that it's really important to figure out the mistakes that are being made, and doing whatever it is to prevent it from happening. This is mainly where my rules come into play, and probably the biggest thing that I'm working on - staying disciplined with my trading rules. Having a journal really helps as well to figure out where I went wrong. You really couldn't have said it any better with regards to concentrating to fix these issues.

Also definitely with you on staying reasonable. Really easy to get ahead of ourselves, but I've learned to trust the process. I understand that it's a journey and just trying to see continuous progress throughout the way - even if it is marginal.

Thanks, and I enjoyed reading your post!

PeanutButter108 

Hey everyone, I'm a newbie who has been sim trading for more than a year with some mixed results. I haven't seen the results yet that I'd like to see before going live, but I'm still pushing through it. It's definitely been a long journey with lots of ups and downs - something I'm sure many of you can recall. Thought it would be cool if some experienced traders can share their thoughts on how being persistent has helped them towards progressing as a trader. Thanks a lot, and looking forward to hear what y'all got to say!

I think you've over-simmed.