How long before going 'live'?

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jessicajung
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Aug 17, 2017 5:33 am

Hello all

I'm new to the forum. I've been trying to learn the ropes of trading for the past year. That has been a real roller coaster and I have made every rookie mistake in the book, I can tell you.

Slowly and painfully I feel I have found a system that is working well for me which includes:
1. Careful bank management with a cautious staking plan
2. A system in which a formula helps me overcome 'greed' and fear and hesitation (you know - the 'just one more tick or three more seconds before trading out', oops I've gone in play' disaster zone). My system follows a formula every time and offers almost boring perameters to my trade now.
3. A measured loss recovery plan if a trade does go against me (and a maximum that I can lose any time- see point 1).

So I am cautiously optimistic that my long apprenticeship is bearing modest fruit now. I've been testing it in training mode and am doing well and think I should be ready to go live now. But curiously I'm a bit nervous to do so. As if going live will jinx it or something! I intend to start with a small bank and watch it develop so there shouldn't be too much of an issue.

So my question is: what's a realistic test period? Two weeks? A month? Three months?

Any experiences to share? I'd be grateful.

Thanks to all for this community
Llosgi
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LeTiss
Posts: 5386
Joined: Fri May 08, 2009 6:04 pm

Number 3 will eventually shag you in the ass

The only loss recovery system I employ, is making sure my winners outweigh my losers.

There is no other foolproof way of tackling losses - losing trades are part of trading, the quicker you accept that the better
Bluesky
Posts: 420
Joined: Mon Sep 19, 2016 9:26 pm

jessicajung wrote:
Thu Aug 17, 2017 5:38 am
But curiously I'm a bit nervous to do so. As if going live will jinx it or something!
Many people feel the same way when they are on the point of using real money on a system that has been working well with pretend money. This is a perfectly natural feeling in my opinion, I am sure you have invested a great deal of time and energy in developing a system that seems to work. Its going to be a huge blow if after all this time, it does not work when used in a real live situation.

From you testing you should have some idea of what results to expect. Its unlikely your live results will be as good as you test results for a number of reasons. If however they are broadly similar then after a reasonable period of time (you are the best person to judge that period) then you can start to up your stakes. Bear in mind though, some systems will only work with really small stakes and all systems have a typing point where increasing the size of the stake reduces the actual overall return.
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Euler
Posts: 24701
Joined: Wed Nov 10, 2010 1:39 pm
Location: Bet Angel HQ

LeTiss wrote:
Thu Aug 17, 2017 7:42 am
Number 3 will eventually shag you in the ass

The only loss recovery system I employ, is making sure my winners outweigh my losers.

There is no other foolproof way of tackling losses - losing trades are part of trading, the quicker you accept that the better
+1

Loss recovery stuff should be completely avoided
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Dublin_Flyer
Posts: 688
Joined: Sat Feb 11, 2012 10:39 am

Euler wrote:
Thu Aug 17, 2017 9:08 am
LeTiss wrote:
Thu Aug 17, 2017 7:42 am
Number 3 will eventually shag you in the ass

The only loss recovery system I employ, is making sure my winners outweigh my losers.

There is no other foolproof way of tackling losses - losing trades are part of trading, the quicker you accept that the better
+1

Loss recovery stuff should be completely avoided
+2

Loss recovery shouldn't be needed if you're doing the right things right. You're just as likely to lose on the 2.50 as you did on the 2.40 if you don't analyse and identify why you lost on the 2.40, bad entry, early exit, late exit etc. If you've upped your stakes to clawback on the 2.50 then by 4.00 you could be tearing your hair out and going in-play, if you wanna get fxxked that bad, I can recommend Tinder ;)
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ShaunWhite
Posts: 9731
Joined: Sat Sep 03, 2016 3:42 am

You've been in practice mode for a year! You must have the patience of a saint. I 'went live' after about a week but did it with such small stakes I'd be struggling to lose £10 a week, which I of course did. For me practice mode was like play money poker, I just couldn't take it seriously enough. Once I'd shelled out for my software and TV subs that few quid extra didn't seem too much of a sacrifice for the added realism.

+N on the comments about ANY form of loss recovery.

If you had a system that needs a loss recovey system, and the loss recovery system is good enough to always work, people would just bin their primary system and use the loss recovery system fulltime instead. That would eliminate the whole concept of a loss recovery system. On that basis alone it's phylosophically unsound so not worth even thinking about persuing. I don't care what a spreadsheet might tell you, they can't exist.
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Frogmella
Posts: 220
Joined: Mon May 30, 2011 2:44 pm
Location: Towcester

If you're nervous about going live, it means that your sub-conscious knows that your "system" is unreliable and will lose you money and cause you distress.

Any reluctance or hesitation to trade is also manifestation of that same internal knowledge.

You can't deceive your own sub-conscious, it will always find ways to prevent you from doing harm to yourself.
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LeTiss
Posts: 5386
Joined: Fri May 08, 2009 6:04 pm

You need to start using REAL money ASAP - the longer you fuck around in practice mode, the more excuses you will find for not being ready yet.

I've said this many times here, but when we were kids and we learning to ride a bike, we had to take the stabilisers off in order to find our balance. Sure, we fell offa few times and got bumps and bruises, but it was the only way to learn how to ride

It's the same with trading, you'll never be a decent trader until you start playing with actual money
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ruthlessimon
Posts: 2094
Joined: Wed Mar 23, 2016 3:54 pm

LeTiss wrote:
Fri Aug 18, 2017 4:09 pm
the more excuses you will find for not being ready yet.
That's a good thing in my book.

IMO, a swing trader can learn his craft on sim. Obviously, there will be a deficiency in the psyche - but the confidence of testing the edge to destruction will breed so much longterm confidence.

Even so going live should still be a very gradual process, in manageable chunks, with a devised timeline (it's not a simple task of simply removing stabilisers, & pray we stay upright). More like learning to swim. Armbands - parent holding - big float - small float - solo small distance - deeper pool - beach party - water polo - channel crossing :) If you can't use the small float, you go back to the big float etc. If you're consistently blowing on silly trades, back on sim you go.
RonObvious
Posts: 198
Joined: Mon Dec 09, 2013 4:12 pm

I think Practice Mode is only useful for testing strategies. For instance go into Practice and scalp then go live and scalp, world of difference.

Anyway I dont understand why people dont just use minimum stakes and try out the real thing... so you lose a few pence if it goes wrong big deal. If losing 50p 'knocks your confidence' then chances are trading isnt for you.
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