Some traders tend to take trading less seriously because it does not involve real money. Here are some practices that will help you keep your focus.
There is nothing wrong with demo trading; it helps you hone your strengths and develop your forex trading skills before moving on to live trading. The problem is that many traders will become careless after a few months of demo trading.
They don't take it seriously and start to wonder about wasting their time on demo trading when they can "accelerate" the learning curve by actually going live. All too often, these traders destroy their first live account. They jump into live trading early and are unable to develop the necessary skills, mindset, and commitment that are essential to becoming consistently profitable traders. It can be mentally tasking, especially when it is not consistent and does not pay off in the end.
Here are two exercises to help you take demo trading seriously.
👌 Feel the Pain
Some traders switch to live trading because they no longer “feel the pain” while encountering losses in demo trading. They feel their lack of progress is due to not using real money.
They do not take it seriously and end up making bad trading decisions. They do not follow the trading plan because they know it will not hurt them to lose money. In the long run, this can be very detrimental to one's personal development, as it helps to develop bad trading habits. To counter this, we suggest considering real-life "penalties" for making such errors.
For example, every time you make a bad trade or do not follow a trading plan, subject yourself to a 90-second push-up.
Did you do the same mistakes again? Wash the dirty dishes in the kitchen! Did you fail to read any of the published news? Then maybe you do not deserve this delicious lunch!
This is similar to what professional athletes do to push themselves to the limit.
Even behind the scenes, a player like Kobe Bryant punishes himself by running a distance for every three-pointer he misses. Novak Djokovic does 100 pushups for every missed serve. Lionel Messi runs a mile for every penalty he does not score.
These are reminders that will help you focus on your trades and get rid of whatever is distracting you from achieving your goals.
👌 Grade your Performance
Final grades are important when you are in the study phase, they will determine whether you pass the course. Use the same concept to study your forex trading performance so you can make the proper adjustments.
Here's how you can treat your demo trading performance as a final test. For example, at the end of each trading week you can rate yourself on a scale of 0 to 10 based on the following criteria:
These are just examples, you can customize the criteria based on the rules of your trading system.