Paper Trading and Day Trading

Paper trading is 'pretend trading' - your very own day trading university if you like. You should always begin your day trading online career by paper trading while you are learning the ropes - you will probably need your real cash later! Paper trading gives a day trader a reasonably good feel for his talent in day trading online and how likely he is to be truly successful at day trading online.

While paper day trading online, a day trader should first become at ease with picking out potential opportunities and focussing on the mechanics of how to place (make-believe) day trades rather than worrying about his profit or loss or cash balance. Once that level has beenreached, the day trader can then begin to concentrate on creating a consistently profitable day trading strategy.

A recently developed alternative to paper trading is to try using one of the cheaper day trading online spread betting companies who will let you day trade for pennies on the point (meaning that you only risk low amounts of dollars rather than big bucks, yet you get the actual feel of 'real' day trading - something that is very hard to acheive while paper trading).