Nice forum btw - thanks for the advice so far.
So I’m a total newbie and I’m about to ask another ‘Is it that simple’ question. However please don’t switch off as mine has a slight twist. The twist is my background and experiences.
I’ve always been a keen gambler and enjoy studying the psychology behind why people bet the way they do. From what I can see - currency trading is no different. A lot of the advice for newbie’s is based around learning the fundamentals, bankroll management, re-evaluating winning and losing trades after the event, assessing risk v’s reward and transfering the skills from profitable play-money trades into real money investments.
With regards evaluating profit or loss - One thing I don’t see talked about as much on this forum as I would on - say a poker forum, is the sample size. For example, lots of traders on this forum seem to make comments like “I made $500 yesterday” or “I made 140 pips last week”, when the first thing I would say is; That sample range is too small - Come back after you’ve made 10,000 trades and lets assess your results then.
But anyway, from what I can see - the one massive advantage with currency trading is the volumes do not effect the outcome so much. For example - if i had a stratagy which allowed me to win money on a $25 poker table, the same stratagy wouldn’t work at a $1000 table as (on average) the standard of player improves as the buy-in increases. The same rules apply to a football game. If I found a winning stratagy betting £1 on Man Utd - that would be fine, but this system wouldn’t work if I wanted to increase each bet to £1000 as most bookie’s have an upper betting limit which is no where near this.
I know I the same theory applies to currency trading but assume the market would not diverse as much with the volumes an individual trades (working on Mr. Sat-at-home-Average-trader).
So anyway, back to my question; So far I’ve been trading with play money on Oanda and have been showing a steady profit. To call me a day trader would be an exaggeration. I work shifts so regularly trade for only 1-3 hours at a time and within this time open and close all my trades. I currently use 1:50 leverage. I plan to deposit £200 real money into an account soon and if this proves successful will probably deposit £1k-£2k thereafter,
So my question is; [B]Presumably a play-money accounts do not replicate exactly real money trading?[/B] For example - I’m guessing play-money trading never accounts for slippage (which I’m guessing will inevitably cost me a few pips here and there when trading for real). So realistically - [B]what else should I take into account real money trading which you don’t factor when trading with play-money?[/B]
Jimmer