My big question is, how much studying should I do before practising for 6 months on a demo account? I've just completed the school of pipsology (www.babypips.com) and I have demo traded for 2-3 months before that so I've got a little bit of experience when it comes to practical trading, but I was wondering if there is ever a point when you can do too much reading about something when in actual fact doing practical work would be more beneficial. I have a young son so it would be ideal for me to carry on studying until he goes to school, then I can really get my head down but what I'm trying to work out is whether I should start demo trading straight away. I know doctors study for years and years before actually practising, but then again some people learn better through experience on the job so it will be interesting to see what sort of answers crop up. This is what I'll be for the next few years of my life so please give me the best answers you possibly can, I'm particularly interested in hearing from people that are already more experienced and/or successful traders. Thanks for reading! P.S If you think you know anywhere better to post this question, please let me know! I'm looking to get as many opinions as possible as this is important to me.
I think you can practice and study at the same time. The important thing to remember is that your demo account HAS to be treated like your real account will be for it to be good practice. Read this post I made a few weeks ago. http://stockaholics.net/threads/how...ering-to-open-a-real-account.1976/#post-23599
Welcome to the board Tina and congrats on your first post. The time spent on a demo account would vary from person to person depending on how fast you catch on. With that said you need to beat the market on a consistence basis and go through the bull and bear markets before taking the plunge. When you do finally start trading, test the water carefully and never go all in and only wager what you can afford to lose. Try to keep about 40% in cash if you can for when the bargains come a knock-in. Good luck...TTT
I think you should practice while studying. Figure out if what style of trading you are going to do. Short Term vs long term or perhaps a blend as well as are you an income investor, growth investor or value investor? You can study and practice each of these styles before gong with real money. Work out your trading rules for each of the styles you might be planning to use. What stocks to watch by your criteria, when to enter a position based on that style, how many shares to buy to manage risk and when to sell a position. each style has it's own set of rules to trade on.
