Trade In The Simulator As If It Were Your Hard-Earned Money!

One of the most well-known statistics that every trader knows is that 90% of those who try to be consistently profitable will fall short into their attempt. In fact, just looking at this one number, it’s going to be easy understanding why trading is not a process that comes natural as human beings. The ability to climb up to the top 10% of them is the result of countless effort that start with a strong level of education and needs the highest level of emotional composure.

While you find yourself in the middle of this learning curve, the differentiating factor between who will succeed in the long run and who is going to fail instead is determined by the perseverance and willingness to accept the lessons coming from every mistake and big losses that will inevitably happen. That is why here at Warrior Trading we strongly suggest to practice with a trading simulator while still in the early stages of your career, so you don’t have to deal with the consequences of these mistakes.

Here is the thing though, that is vital to know while you practice with paper trading. Execute exactly as if it were your hard-earned money! If you really want this time to be adding value in your career, there is no other way to approach it. It’s totally fine comparing your results with other traders but it is much more important to focus into your own decision-making process and risk management. Although I know it may sound obvious on one hand, it is so much counter intuitive on the other one.

The power of counter-intuitive thinking

What I mean by that goes much more further than that. I strongly believe that teaching your mind about how to become greatly counter intuitive is a huge piece of what will help you transitioning to a better trading. For example, if you are a long bias trader like I am, you’ve to know that there are short bias traders playing against you.

So, before jumping into the next trade, instead of this kind of thinking:

“This stock is spiking, I’m jumping into it right away”

Here, there is no questions asked. And this is exactly what will cause a trader to buy way too high and have a negative imbalance between profit and risk potential.

Instead, I encourage to train yourself on this counter intuitive process, looking to negate the indication of your opposite bias:

“Would I cover my position here if I had a short position opened into this stock”?

As you can see, here we’ve just switched from an affirmation into a clear question. As soon as you’re able to answer this question, get ready to execute the trade.

In fact, you’ll be more willing to wait for the first pull back before opening a long position because you already know that more short bias traders will cover theirs at the beginning of the next strong push and this behavior will contribute to determine an increase in price.

This specific mindset will require more effort at the beginning but once you’ll have reached the required level of mindfulness behind this whole idea, another enormous step forward will be done and you’ll be ready for greater achievements.

“And if they insist on trying to time their participation in equities, they should try to be fearful when others are greedy and greedy only when others are fearful” – Warren Buffet – 2004 Annual Shareholder Letter.

See you in the chat-room!

Trade safe,

Roberto Barbaro