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Strategies & Market Trends : Systems, Strategies and Resources for Trading Futures -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: virtualsignal who wrote (41728)	12/4/2000 1:28:35 PM
From: Atin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 44573

The real difference is the sweaty palms . . . ie the psychology -- same as with stock trading I'd imagine. One is more prone to making mistakes when real money is at stake (or real steaks are at stake for that matter :) ). -A

To: virtualsignal who wrote (41728)	12/4/2000 2:00:35 PM
From: Patrick Slevin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 44573

Uh, yeah. Psychological mostly. When you are paper trading it's all ego. Plus you are prone to cut yourself some slack here and there on the true results. Then you might be up a few bucks and try to allow it to stretch and make out... When you are trading money it's ego and fear. You might be up a couple of bucks and run the heck out of the trade rather than allow the profit to run. It's a lot different. When I started with real money I had been trading OEX options for years. A fellow named Toppel who wrote a book on trading suggested I stick to the mini until I became comfortable with the large contract. I probably should have listened. In those days though you still had to make a phone call no matter what you traded. The enticement of an order entry screen wasn't there. Hence the speed advantage of one over the other did not mean much to me so I stuck to the larger contract. I would think that no matter how good your results are on paper you should still have guarded optimism when it comes to real bucks. Sorry I have not been able to respond to the other question yet but I shall.